meet the storm. Then the blinding rain hid everything from our sight. It was soon over, and the sun shone with increased brilliancy. The yacht was some two miles further down the estuary, shaking out the reefs in her mainsail. We hurried to reach the tarn, and saw the water literally boiling with trout, while the dashes along the margin told us that the pike were on the run. The coracle was soon launched, the trimmers baited; and while Seymour and Morton proceeded to set them, I took my fly rod and set to work with a will, for the trout in all these Llyns are very capricious, and there was no knowing how soon they might leave off feeding.

The two in the coracle did not begin very auspiciously, for they went on spinning round at a tremendous rate, and made progress in every direction but the one they desired. At last, profiting by my directions, Morton got into the figure-of-eight stroke by which these boats are impelled, and they got along more smoothly. They set the trimmers at regular distances along the edge of the weeds, around the rocks, by stones, and finished with a line straight across the tarn to windward, so that they might drift across. In the mean time I had landed two speckled beauties, one two pounds in weight, and the other one pound and a half; and by the time they had finished their

work the ripples had died away, the trout had gone off the feed, and I laid down my rod and prepared for a bathe. Oh the delights of a header off a rock ten feet high, and an unknown depth of clear, cold water below you! And that tarn was cold. We swam across and back again, and then, after dressing, Seymour and the boy started off home, with the intention of bringing the ladies up the next day. Left to ourselves, Morton and I rigged up our tent, lit a fire of dry gorse and fern, broiled one of the trout, and then concocted a glass of grog to accompany our cigars.

Reader, if you are fond of the mysterious, and delight in supernatural stories, spend a night on the mountains. You will soon be in a condition to believe the most marvellous fairy-tales that ever were told by the light of peat fires, in lonely mountain cottages. It was very awful and solemn, that gradual approach of night, amid the stillness of the hills-stillness that was only broken now and then by the cry of the lapwing, a cry that always makes my blood curdle when heard at night, when it comes with startling distinctness upon the ear. We could almost fancy at times that it came from those ghost-like forms of mist, that rose in slender columns from the water, and which needed but little imagination to transfer them into fays and water sprites emerging for their nightly gambols.

I

Few other sounds reached the ear. Sometimes the splash of some monster in the pool, or the rattle of a stone down the mountain side, broke the quiet. With the natural instincts of men in such a position, we spoke in whispers; and if now and then we made an effort and spoke in our natural voice, it went echoing so loudly from rock to rock, and seemed so out of place, that we gladly lowered our tone, and half expected the spirits of the night to take instant vengeance on the two daring men who had invaded their solitudes. Wrapped in our rugs, on odorous beds of fern, and well protected from the mist by the tarpaulin, we were soon in a sound sleep. When I awoke the dark was just lifting; and arousing Morton, we got up and stretched ourselves, and then climbed to the top of the mountain to watch the sunrise. Below us all was one sheet of mist. To the eastward the mountain tops peeped above it, and were just fringed with the daylight. The first silvery white of the dawn changed into a beautiful green, which rose higher and higher, and diminished in size, until it became a mere streak between the more brilliant colours of red and orange. One by one the rosy rays darted across the mist to our feet, and at last the sun was fairly up. The clouds then began to roll up from the hill sides, and melt away in the blue. The mist shot up in many

tinted columns, or passed in heavy billows away to seaward; and as it opened out, glens, villages, lakes, and farms showed clearly in the morning air. We sat quietly looking at it all, and listening to the click of the stonechat perched on a boulder near us, and the not unmusical call of the cow-boy far down below. Morton was the first to speak.

"I say, old fellow, I want to speak to you about Winnie. I know you're considerably spooney upon her. Why don't you pluck up courage and speak to her? we shall be away in a week, and you mayn't have another opportunity goodness knows how long. I'd as soon have you for a brother-in-law as any fellow I know."

"Thank you, Jack," I said; "but you see how she avoids me."

"That's because you were too impetuous at first: you frightened her; and besides, somebody's been regaling her with some precious stories about you; and between you and me, Alec, you know you ain't so good as you might be.”

"That's just it. I'm not half up to her, and I am afraid it will be labour in vain; but I'll try—to-day, if I can."

"That's right; and now let us have some breakfast." During breakfast we "spotted" several trimmers with

the red side up—a sign that a fish was on, and one in particular was careering across the pool in famous style. We bathed, of course, and Morton could not resist the temptation of taking a trimmer line in his teeth, and swimming ashore with the fish, an exploit which nearly cost him his life, through the line getting twisted round his legs.

About twelve o'clock we saw four donkeys coming up the hill, three with the girls, and the fourth considerately laden with a large basket of provisions. The girls were delighted with our camp, and Carrie must needs go out by herself in the coracle; and as she, like all tyros, could only spin it around, we had to get her back by tying a stone to my pike line, and, throwing it across her, drag her gently back by its means.

We had grand fun hauling in the pike. True, there were not many-twelve, I think-but then not one was less than four pounds, and one was nearly thirteen. Some of them fought so stoutly that we had to paddle ashore with the line for safety's sake, in which case the lines were given to the girls, and then there was such screaming and laughing, as they pulled the struggling, snapping brutes ashore. Winnie did. not seem to enjoy it so much as the others; she was sorry for the poor fish, and I thought looked rather disgusted as I gave them the quietus with a big stone.