you into a secret, the article strapped to the umbrella is a fly-rod, and I have received an invitation to see the papermill and make acquaintance with paper-mill trout. I have spoiled so much paper in my time that I resolve to inspect the mill as a matter of duty to conscience; I need neither argument nor resolve with the trout, being always ready for them. From the excitement which the arrival of a stranger causes among the workpeople, I am led to the conclusion that life at Sarratt Mills is regular, not to say monotonous; it must of necessity be so to the ladies whom I espy over the garden hedge, in broad-brimmed hats and white gauntlets, busy at the flower beds, and for whom there is absolutely no society near at hand.

A mill-head for angling purposes is a very different affair from a mill-tail. The former is quiet sometimes to stagnation; the latter characterized by perpetual motion. The Chess in the one fishable meadow at Sarratt takes the form of a mill-head, and it was like my inveterate ill-fortune that I should find it smooth and quiet as a pond. A trout would be nothing less than idiotic to take an artificial fly under those circumstances. But was there ever an angler yet who would be deterred from at any rate making an attempt, whatever the chances might be? The foreman of the mill, into whose hands the hospitable proprietor delivered me, thought it the worst of taste on my part that I did not at once accompany him into the mill. He was a practical Yorkshireman, and could not imagine why I was not as enthusiastic about his business as was he himself.

After the honeysuckles, wild roses, woods, cornfields, and hedgerows, I am bound to say the paper-mill did not strike me as being particularly attractive. The first process I found was quite appropriately termed "dusting;" two very dirty young women were tending a revolving circular

wire cage in an atmosphere of dreadful dust which might represent the sweeping of all the London garrets. In another room grimy girls were cutting up barge canvas, potato sacks, tarpaulins, ropes, and other materials of the marine store class. In another the "hands" were sorting the rags-soft pink rags for blotting-paper, and white rags for white paper, blue and other colours being artificially produced. Upstairs dressmakers' clippings and black odds and ends of various materials were, after being boiled and rinsed with lime-water, prepared for the soft whity-brown paper in which madame's drapery purchases are wrapped. Out of the stinking mass seething in the boiler would byand-by come the wholesome paper bags in which your confectioner sends you your cracknels. Then came the breaker-room, where, by an ingenious drum-washing apparatus, rags were broken and cleansed. Next it was shown how the rags were reduced to pulp, or as it is technically termed, "half-stuff.”

By this time the choking dust and uncomfortable rags had been left in the rear, the atmosphere was sweeter, and the workpeople were much more wholesome in appearance. The vats were full of yeasty-looking pulp, which, having passed through a strainer, bore a resemblance to clean curds. The pulp requires much refining before it leaves the vats, and the material at each stage assumed a fairer quality, until it descended to the machine-rooms, where what seemed to be a number of printing presses were at work. Here the pulp flowed in a smooth stream along a shoot, ran over several miniature weirs, refining as it travelled, until it spread out and became an almost impalpable sheet over a tightly strained wire bed. Dryer and dryer it became, and at the last weir the sheet went between two massive rollers of felt,

C

to all intents finished paper, though rollers and cylinders remained for drying and calendering.

The paper-mill trout, it was evident even to the foreman, could be kept waiting no longer. It was but a short length of water at one's disposal, for the Chess is most rigorously preserved, and the boundary fence of the Sarratt Mill land was not more than two hundred yards off. The fish refused to respond to any manner of temptation. Long line, short line; wet fly, dry fly; fine cast, coarse cast; flies dark and light, large and small, shared the same uniform fate. In such case there is nothing lost by suspending operations and making a few quiet observations. In other words, spike your rod, lie down on the grass (if it be not too damp), and watch. So I advised myself, and so I did.

When everything was quiet the fish began to move about, evidently returning from the deeps into which they had been scared to the banks under which they had been originally lying. They arrived singly, and with no little commotion took up each its favourite position. Giving them leisure to settle down into confidence, I made ready, and having previously marked the particular bunch of grass near which the fish lay, dropped the fly upon it, whence it tumbled gently into the edge of the water. A suck from the trout, a delicate but firm jerk from the fisherman, and the mischief was accomplished. The fish leaped clean out of the water, and frightened numbers of which I had had no previous suspicion away from the margin. But he was well hooked, and all his plucky fighting could not save him. In about an hour quietness again reigned supreme, and a second trout was deluded into the fancy that my hare's ear was a dainty morsel accidentally falling in his way.

a modest bit of sport, but it fitted well into a long day

which had included a succession of enjoyments as miscellaneous as the subjects of this chapter.

And Cheneys still remained. The Sleepy Hollow of Sarratt was left to its seclusion, and the high-road once more gained. Cheneys, about a mile and a half farther on, is a placid, eminently respectable village, commanding the loveliest woodland walks. Attached to the church is the mausoleum, where lie many members of the Russell family, among them Lord William, who was beheaded in Lincoln's Inn Fields. No one goes to Cheneys without seeing the remarkable monuments and faded banners of the mausoleum; the fine old Elizabethan Manor House, with its cool quadrangle and dark-leaved ivy; and the veteran oak, planted, it is said, by the fair hand of good Queen Bess herself. Pursuing the valley upwards Latimers and Chesham are reached, the Chess rising near the latter place. The lower part of the river has been spoiled by mill-poisoning, but between Sarratt and its source it maintains its high reputation as a trout stream.

CHAPTER II.

MODERN YARMOUTH.

OR one I do not hesitate to admit undying affection for the really ancient town of Great Yarmouth. It is not because St. Nicholas, the friend of the mariner, is its patron saint, and the building bearing his name the finest parish church in England. It is a matter of very little moment to me whether, in the year of our Lord 495, Cerdicus, the warlike Saxon, and Henricus his son, did or did not come unto those yellow sands. It may be recorded, but one need not be particularly moved by the fact, that for eight hundred years herrings and Yarmouth have been, at home, if not abroad, synonymous terms. We may, on the whole, take it as a matter of actual occurrence that the Dutch and Fleming refugees, persecuted out of their own countries, settled here. Very little am I moved by, though not denying, the historical associations of the place, including as they do a Cromwell, a Nelson, or even a Winthrop Mackworth Praed, who once sat for the borough.

These, though matters of passing interest, are not provocative of affection. I love Yarmouth because, over and