The Giant Eel
We have met three or four times up at the lake, and each time I have heard the story of the great eel. Its skin was :` the length of a door and two hand-spans wide." The teller of the story haunts the water there almost as much as the heron. He wears an ancient hat that is decorated with bedraggled salmon- and trout-flies: The lapels of his jacket are pricked and torn into a fluff that surpasses that of the coarsest tweed—the sign of a real angler this. When we meet he tells me, "I fished here more than thirty years ago. The perch were bigger, the pike better. Had some great trout here too." Invariably we come to that eel. It was caught by the owner of the derelict farm across the water. He took it with, a trout for bait, and landed it by the use of a spear. "You can tell how big that eel was," adds my acquaintance. I gasp in astonishment, and he walks away, having said his piece. I have not seen him land a pike or even a half-sized perch, but I know that he has memories that put my catch to shame.
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