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HOW WE STOCKED THE MERE.

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Y grandfather lived in a house called Bn Mere. It was a low rambling building, with rooms all opening into one another in a sociable sort of way; while a number of offices stood respectfully at a little distance off, like servants waiting at dinner. The very inconvenience of its arrangements was its greatest charm in the eyes of a boy twelve years old. You could hardly go anywhere about it under shelter. The barn, coach-house, and stables were more than one hundred yards off. The back-kitchen, laundry, beer-cellar, knife-house, and apple-store were set round a court called the stone-yard. Beyond this, through an archway, was the pump-yard, fringed with humbler offices, of which one was a covered tank for hogs' wash. This I was instructed to consider unfathomable. Many a time have I watched the yardman baling out swill for the pigs, with a ladle ten feet long, and thought the worst possible form of death

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The Wood-shed.

would be to slip over its edge, and be left inside with the great wooden door shut down upon me. It was only two feet deep, but I did not know that then. Beyond the pumpyard was the cinder-house and wood-shed. This last was a precious preserve to me and my brother. The Duke of Athol never set more store by Glen Tilt than we did by the woodshed, for it swarmed with sparrows. They built their nests by scores in the ragged mossgrown roof. Every beam and rafter in that shed was as familiar to me as a mountain-pass to the deer-stalker. Year after year, we climbed, tore our clothes, and the skin off our knuckles, in probing the holes in the roof for eggs; and when, in after-days, the shed was condemned, and pulled down, I felt as if one of the strongest links which bound me to my childhood had been broken.

There were many other attractions to the place. The banks around were drilled with rabbit-holes; and I believe we could have challenged any warrener as to the making and setting of rabbit-nets. We had two ferrets, Pug and Polyhymnia by name, and with these two we kept the household, and many of our neighbours, supplied with rabbit-pies throughout the winter.

The Blind Mat-maker.

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But the charm of the place was the mere. This was a piece of water of about ten acres, with sloping grass banks, and a plantation along one side. Here and there, at the further edge, grew patches of strong rush, which a blind man was allowed to cut for the purpose of making into mats. Poor old fellow! I see him now. He used to come in the summer with a sickle, and a child to lead him. Once set on the bank, opposite to a bed of rushes, with his face in the right direction, he waded in with outstretched arms, and his sickle in his right hand, like old Time. When he reached the rushes, he cut an armful, sawing away down below the surface till the long green shafts sprang up into his embrace. Then carrying the bundle back to his child, who spread them out in the sunshine to dry, he groped darkly backwards and forwards all the day. He was a great favourite of my grandfather's, and the servants used to take him out beer, with a dash of gin in it. When the mats were made, he sold some of them to his benefactor at considerably above cost price, and hawked the rest about the neighbourhood.

The only drawback to the mere was its want of fish. When we were quite young, little tots in the nursery, it had been dried up by a

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The Perch-Pond.

succession of very hot summers.

Most tantalizing were the tales we were told about the fish which had been taken out as the waters grew low-one pike was said to have weighed twenty-seven pounds. It was so large, grandfather said, that it was cut up and sent piecemeal in presents to the neighbours round.

When we were about twelve years old, my brother and I had serious consultations about re-stocking the mere. It was a work of faith -we could not hope to see much result for several summers: but still the work itself had immediate as well as prospective attractions. We began. There was a small deep pond about a mile off, choke-full of little perch, which bit as fast as we could drop the bait among them. They never reached any size there; the biggest was not more than four or five inches long-indeed, they had no room to grow. The great difficulty was to catch them without killing them in the process. They were so greedy that they generally swallowed the hook at once. However, by striking the moment the float bobbed, we used to twitch them out before they had time to gorge themselves. Provided with a pailful of water, into which we put them, we worked on the whole summer, carrying the vessel back, one

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on each side, with several rests, and carefully emptying it into the mere. Thus we transplanted many score of little perch, who had long been sick of one another's society, and turned off on their tails, each one for himself, directly they had an opportunity of being independent.

We felt that perch alone would not be enough, so we set to work snaring pike. There was a fen in the parish traversed by a slow stream. From this a number of straight dikes, about five feet wide, stretched right and left. In the spring, the pike, which abounded in the river, used to penetrate up these to spawn. This was our opportunity. Armed with a pole tipped with a wire noose, we crept along by the side of the ditches, till we saw a pike basking in the shallow, over the warm black mud. Hist! be quiet. Here is one. Lowering the pole gently about a yard before him, the wire having been previously tried to see whether it slipped easily, we passed the loop slowly over his nose. If we could do this without touching him, and coax it on past his gills, he was ours. A sharp jerk tightened the noose a tug, a splash, and out floundered Mr. Pike sideways, very much astonished and woke up, but none the worse, except, perhaps,

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