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It was as fair a morning of July as ever dawned in the blue
summer sky; the sun as yet had risen but a little way above
the waves of fresh green foliage which formed the horizon of
the woodland scenery surrounding Widecomb manor; and his
heat, which promised ere mid-day to become excessive, was
tempered now by the exhalations of the copious night-dews,
and by the cool breath of the western breeze, which came down
through the leafy gorges, in long, soft swells from the open
moorland.

All nature was alive and joyous; the air was vocal with the
piping melody of the blackbirds and thrushes, carolling in every
brake and bosky dingle; the smooth, green lawn, before
the windows of the old hall, was peopled with whole tribes of
fat, lazy hares, limping about among the dewy herbage, fearless,
as it would seem, of man's aggression; and to complete
the picture, above a score of splendid peacocks were strutting
to and fro on the paved terraces, or perched upon the carved
stone balustrades, displaying their gorgeous plumage to the early
sunshine.

The shadowy mists of the first morning twilight had not been

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long dispersed from the lower regions, and were suspended
still in the middle air in broad fleecy masses, though melting
rapidly away in the increasing warmth and brightness of the
day.

And still a faint blue line hovered over the bed of the long
rocky gorge, which divided the chase from the open country,
floating about like the steam of a seething caldron, and rising
here and there into tall smoke-like columns, probably where
some steeper cataract of the mountain-stream sent its foam skyward.

So early, indeed, was the hour, that had my tale been recited
of these degenerate days, there would have been no gentle eyes
awake to look upon the loveliness of newly-awakened nature.

In the good days of old, however, when daylight was still
deemed to be the fitting time for labor and for pastime, and
night the appointed time for natural and healthful sleep, the
dawn was wont to brighten beheld by other eyes than those of
clowns and milkmaids, and the gay songs of the matutinal birds
were listened to by ears that could appreciate their untaught
melodies.

And now, just as the stable-clock was striking four, the great
oaken door of the old hall was thrown open with a vigorous
swing that made it rattle on its hinges, and Jasper St. Aubyn
came bounding out into the fresh morning air, with a foot as
elastic as that of the mountain roe, singing a snatch of some
quaint old ballad.

He was dressed simply in a close-fitting jacket and tight hose
of dark-green cloth, without any lace or embroidery, light boots
of untanned leather, and a broad-leafed hat, with a single eagle's
feather thrust carelessly through the band. He wore neither
cloak nor sword, though it was a period at which gentlemen
rarely went abroad without both these, their distinctive attributes;
but in the broad black belt which girt his rounded waist

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he carried a stout wood-knife with a buckhorn hilt; and over
his shoulder there swung, from a leathern thong, a large wicker
fishing-basket.

Nothing, indeed, could be simpler or less indicative of any
particular rank or station in society than young St. Aubyn's
garb, yet it would have been a very dull and unobservant eye
which should take him for aught less than a high-born and
high-bred gentleman.

His fine intellectual face, his bearing erect before heaven,
the graceful ease of his every motion, as he hurried down the
flagged steps of the terrace, and planted his light foot on the
dewy greensward, all betokened gentle birth and gentle associations.

But he thought nothing of himself, nor cared for his advantages,
acquired or natural. The long and heavy salmon-rod
which he carried in his right hand, in three pieces as yet unconnected,
did not more clearly indicate his purpose than the
quick marking glance which he cast toward the half-veiled sun
and hazy sky, scanning the signs of the weather.

“It will do, it will do,” he said to himself, thinking as it were
aloud, “for three or four hours at least; the sun will not shake
off those vapors before eight o'clock at the earliest, and if he do
come out then hot and strong, I do not know but the water is
dark enough after the late rains to serve my turn awhile longer.
It will blow up, too, I think from the westward, and there will
be a brisk curl on the pools. But come, I must be moving, if I
would reach Darringford to breakfast.

And as he spoke he strode out rapidly across the park toward
the deep chasm of the stream, crushing a thousand aromatic
perfumes from the dewy wild-flowers with his heedless foot,
and thinking little of the beauties of nature, as he hastened to
the scene of his loved exercise.

It was not long, accordingly, before he reached the brink of

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the steep rocky bank above the stream, which he proposed to
fish that morning, and paused to select the best place for descending
to the water's edge.

It was, indeed, a striking and romantic scene as ever met
the eye of painter or of poet. On the farther side of the gorge,
scarcely a hundred yards distant, the dark limestone rocks rose
sheer and precipitous from the very brink of the stream, rifted
and broken into angular blocks and tall columnar masses, from
the clefts of which, wherever they could find soil enough to
support their scanty growth, a few stunted oaks shot out almost
horizontally with their gnarled arms and dark-green foliage, and
here and there the silvery bark and quivering tresses of the
birch relieved the monotony of color by their gay brightness.
Above, the cliffs were crowned with the beautiful purple
heather, now in its very glow of summer bloom, about which
were buzzing myriads of wild bees sipping their nectar from its
cups of amethyst.

The hither side, though rough and steep and broken, was not
in the place where Jasper stood precipitous; indeed, it seemed
as if at some distant period a sort of landslip had occurred, by
which the fall of the rocky wall had been broken into massive
fragments, and hurled down in an inclined plane into the bed
of the stream, on which it had encroached with its shattered
blocks and rounded boulders.

Time, however, had covered all this abrupt and broken slope
with a beautiful growth of oak and hazel coppice, among which,
only at distant intervals, could the dun weather-beaten flanks
of the great stones be discovered.

At the base of this descent, a hundred and fifty feet perhaps
below the stand of the young sportsman, flowed the dark arrowy
stream — a wild and perilous water. As clear as crystal, yet
as dark as the brown cairn-gorm, it came pouring down among
the broken rocks with a rapidity and force which showed what

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must be its fury when swollen by a storm among the mountains,
here breaking into wreaths of rippling foam where some unseen
ledge chafed its current, there roaring and surging white as
December's snow among the great round-headed rocks, and
there again wheeling in sullen eddies, dark and deceitful, round
and round some deep rock-brimmed basin.

Here and there, indeed, it spread into wide shallow rippling
rapids, filling the whole bottom of the ravine from side to side,
but more generally it did not occupy above a fourth part of the
space below, leaving sometimes on this margin, sometimes on
that, broad pebbly banks, or slaty ledges, affording an easy footing,
and a clear path to the angler of its troubled waters.

After a rapid glance over the well-known scene, Jasper
plunged into the coppice, and following a faint track worn by
the feet of the wild-deer in the first instance, and widened by
his own bolder tread, soon reached the bottom of the chasm,
though not until he had flushed from the dense oak covert two
noble black cocks with their superb forked tails, and glossy
purple-lustred plumage, which soared away, crowing their bold
defiance, over the heathery moorlands.

Once at the water's edge, the young man's tackle was speedily
made ready, and in a few minutes his long line went whistling
through the air, as he wielded the powerful two-handed
rod, as easily as if it had been a stripling's reed; and the large
gaudy peacock-fly alighted on the wheeling eddies, at the tail
of a long arrowy shoot, as gently as if it had settled from too
long a flight. Delicately, deftly, it was made to dance and
skim the clear, brown surface, until it had crossed the pool and
neared the hither bank; then again, obedient to the pliant wrist,
it arose on glittering wing, circled half round the angler's head,
and was sent thirty yards aloof, straight as a wild bee's flight,
into a little mimic whirlpool, scarce larger than the hat of the
skilful fisherman, which spun round and round just below a

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gray ledge of limestone. Scarce had it reached its mark before
the water broke all around it, and the gay deceit vanished,
the heavy swirl of the surface, as the break was closing, indicating
the great size of the fish which had risen. Just as the
swirl was subsiding, and the forked tail of the monarch of the
stream was half seen as he descended, that indescribable but
well-known turn of the angler's wrist, fixed the barbed hook,
and taught the scaly victim the nature of the prey he had gorged
so heedlessly.

With a wild bound he threw himself three feet out of the water,
showing his silver sides, with the sea-lice yet clinging to
his scales, a fresh sea-run fish of fifteen, ay, eighteen pounds,
and perhaps over.

On his broad back he strikes the water, but not as he meant
the tightened line; for as he leaped the practised hand had
lowered the rod's tip, that it fell in a loose bight below him.
Again! again! again; and yet a fourth time he bounded into the
air with desperate and vigorous soubresaults, like an unbroken
steed that would dismount his rider, lashing the eddies of the
dark stream into bright bubbling streaks, and making the heart
of his captor beat high with anticipation of the desperate struggle
that should follow, before the monster would lie panting and
exhausted on the yellow sand or moist greensward.

Away! with the rush of an eagle through the air, he is gone
like an arrow down the rapids — how the reel rings, and the
line whistles from the swift-working wheel; he is too swift,
too headstrong to be checked as yet; tenfold the strength of
that slender tackle might not control him in his first fiery
rush.

But Jasper, although young in years, was old in the art, and
skilful as the craftiest of the gentle craftsmen. He gives him
the butt of his rod steadily, trying the strength of his tackle
with a delicate and gentle finger, giving him line at every rush,

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yet firmly, cautiously, feeling his mouth all the while, and moderating
his speed even while he yields to his fury.

Meanwhile, with the eye of intuition and the nerve of iron,
he bounds along the difficult shore, he leaps from rock to rock,
alighting on their silvery tops with the firm agility of the ropedancer,
he splashes knee-deep through the slippery shallows,
keeping his line ever taut, inclining his rod over his shoulder,
bearing on his fish ever with a killing pull, steering him clear
of every rock or stump against which he would fain smash the
tackle, and landing him at length in a fine open roomy pool, at
the foot of a long stretch of white and foamy rapids, down
which he has just piloted him with the eye of faith, and the
foot of instinct.

And now the great salmon has turned sulky; like a piece of
lead he has sunk to the bottom of the deep black pool, and lies
on the gravel bottom in the sullenness of despair.

Jasper stooped, gathered up in his left hand a heavy pebble,
and pitched it into the pool, as nearly as he could guess to the
whereabout of his game — another — and another! Ah! that
last has roused him. Again he throws himself clear out of
water, and again foiled in his attempt to smash the tackle, dashes
away down stream impetuous.

But his strength is departing — the vigor of his rush is broken.
The angler gives him the butt abundantly, strains on him
with a heavier pull, yet ever yields a little as he exerts his failing
powers; see, his broad silver side has thrice turned up,
even turned to the surface, and though each time he was recovered
himself, each time it has been with a heavier and more
sickly motion.

Brave fellow! his last race is run, his last spring sprung —
no more shall he disport himself in the bright reaches of the
Tamar; no more shall the Naiads wreathe his clear silver
scales with river-greens and flowery rushes.

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The cruel gaff is in his side — his cold blood stains the eddies
for a moment — he flaps out his death-pang on the hard
limestone.

“Who-whoop! a nineteen-pounder!”

Meantime the morning had worn onward, and ere the great
fish was brought to the basket the sun had soared clear above
the mist-wreaths, and had risen so high into the summer heaven
that his slant rays poured down into the gorge of the stream,
and lighted up the clear depths with a lustre so transparent that
every pebble at the bottom might have been discerned, with the
large fish here and there floating mid depth, with their heads
up stream, their gills working with a quick motion, and their
broad tails vibrating at short intervals slowly but powerfully, as
they lay motionless in opposition to the very strongest of the
swift current.

The breeze had died away, there was no curl upon the water,
and the heat was oppressive.

Under such circumstances, to whip the stream was little better
than mere loss of time, yet, as he hurried with a fleet foot
down the gorge, perhaps with some ulterior object, beyond the
mere love of sport, Jasper at times cast his fly across the stream,
and drew it neatly, and, as he thought, irresistibly right over
the recusant fish; but though once or twice a large lazy salmon
would sail up slowly from the depths, and almost touch the fly
with his nose, he either sunk down slowly in disgust, without
breaking the water, or flapped his broad tail over the shining
fraud as if to mark his contempt.

It had now got to be near noon, for in the ardor of his success
the angler had forgotten all about his intended breakfast;
and, his first fish captured, had contented himself with a slender
meal furnished from out his fishing-basket and his leathern
bottle.

Jasper had traversed by this time some ten miles in length,

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following the sinuosities of the stream, and had reached a favorite
pool at the head of a long, straight, narrow trench, cut
by the waters themselves in the course of time, through the
hard schistous rock which walls the torrent on each hand, not
leaving the slightest ledge or margin between the rapids and
the precipice.

Through this wild gorge, of some fifty yards in length, the
river shoots like an arrow over a steep inclined plain of limestone
rock, the surface of which is polished by the action of
the water, till it is as slippery as ice, and at the extremity leaps
down a sheer descent of some twelve feet into a large, wide
basin, surrounded by softly swelling banks of greensward, and
a fair amphitheatre of woodland.

At the upper end this pool is so deep as to be vulgarly deemed
unfathomable; below, however, it expands yet wider into a
shallow rippling ford, where it is crossed by the high-road,
down stream of which again there is another long, sharp-rapid,
and another fall, over the last steps of the hill; after which the
nature of the stream becomes changed, and it murmurs gently
onward through a green pastoral country unrippled and uninterrupted.

Just in the inner angle of the high-road, on the right hand of
the stream, there stood an old-fashioned, low-browed, thatch-covered,
stone cottage, with a rude portico of rustic woodwork
overrun with jasmine and virgin-bower, and a pretty flower-garden
sloping down in successive terraces to the edge of the
basin. Beside this, there was no other house in sight, unless
it were part of the roof of a mill which stood in the low ground
on the brink of the second fall, surrounded with a mass of willows.
But the tall steeple of a country-church raising itself
heavenward above the brow of the hill, seemed to show that,
although concealed by the undulations of the ground, a village
was hard at hand.

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The morning had changed a second time, a hazy film had
crept up to the zenith, and the sun was now covered with a
pale golden veil, and a slight current of air down the gorge ruffled
the water.

It was a capital pool, famous for being the temporary haunt
of the very finest fish, which were wont to lay there awhile, as
if to recruit themselves after the exertion of leaping the two
falls and stemming the double rapid, before attempting to ascend
the stream farther.

Few, however, even of the best and boldest fishermen cared
to wet a line in its waters, in consequence of the supposed impossibility
of following a heavy fish through the gorge below or
checking him at the brink of the fall. It is true, that throughout
the length of the pass, the current was broken by bare, slippery
rocks peering above the waters, at intervals, which might be
cleared by an active cragsman; and it had been in fact reconnoitred
by Jasper and others in cool blood, but the result of the
examination was that it was deemed impracticable as a fishing
ground.

Thinking, however, little of striking a large fish, and perhaps
desiring to waste a little time before scaling the banks and
emerging on the high road, Jasper threw a favorite fly of peacock's
harl and gold tinsel lightly across the water; and, almost
before he had time to think, had hooked a monstrous fish, which
at the very first leap, he set down as weighing at least thirty
pounds.

Thereupon followed a splendid display of piscatory skill.
Well known that his fish must be lost if he once should succeed
in getting his head down the rapid, Jasper exerted every nerve,
and exhausted every art to humor, to meet, to restrain, to check
him. Four times the fish rushed for the pass, and four times,
Jasper met him so stoutly with the butt, trying his tackle to the
very utmost, that he succeeded in forcing him from the perilous

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spot. Round and round the pool he had piloted him, and had
taken post at length, hoping that the worst was already over,
close to the opening of the rocky chasm.

And now, perhaps waxing too confident, he checked his fish
too sharply. Stung into fury, the monster sprang five times in
succession into the air, lashing the water with his angry tail,
and then rushed like an arrow down the chasm.

He was gone — but Jasper's blood was up, and thinking of
nothing but his sport, he dashed forward and embarked with a
fearless foot in the terrible descent.

Leap after leap he took with beautiful precision, alighting
firm and erect on the centre of each slippery block, and bounding
thence to the next with unerring instinct, guiding his fish the
while with consummate skill through the intricacies of the pass.

There were now but three more leaps to be taken before he
would reach the flat table-rock above the fall, which once attained,
he would have firm foot-hold and a fair field. Already
he rejoiced, triumphant in the success of his bold attainment,
and confident in victory, when a shrill female shriek reached
his ears, from the pretty flower-garden; caught by the sound
he diverted his eyes, just as he leaped, toward the place whence
it came; his foot slipped, and the next instant he was flat on
his back in the swift stream, where it shot the most furiously
over the glassy rock. He struggled manfully, but in vain.
The smooth, slippery surface afforded no purchase to his griping
fingers, no hold to his laboring feet. One fearful, agonizing
conflict with the wild waters, and he was swept helplessly
over the edge of the fall, his head, as he glanced down foot
foremost, striking the rocky brink not without violence.

He was plunged into the deep pool, and whirled round and
round by the dark eddies long before he rose, but still, though
stunned and half disabled, he strove terribly to support himself,
but it was all in vain.

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Again he sunk and rose once more, and as he rose that wild
shriek again reached his ears, and his last glance fell upon a
female form wringing her hands in terror on the bank, and a
young man rushing down in wild haste from the cottage on the
hill-side.

He felt that aid was at hand, and struck out again for life —
for dear life.

But the water seemed to fail beneath him.

A slight flash sprang across his eyes, his brain reeled, and
all was blackness.

He sunk to the bottom, spurned it with his feet, and rose
once more, but not to the surface.

His quivering blue hands emerged alone above the relentless
waters, grasped for a little moment at empty space and then disappeared.

The circling ripples closed over him, and subsided into stillness.

He felt, knew, suffered nothing more.

His young, warm heart was cold and lifeless — his soul had
lost its consciousness — the vital spark had faded into darkness—
perhaps was quenched for ever.

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