The Cap
After three days dragging they found him, mouth in the mud, hair tangled with weeds and roots of water-lilies; and here and there about him whose careful fly — Dark Snipe and Purple had hovered temptingly, a trout nosed, curious.
Now was the mayfly season which year by year had found him standing stiller than a heron among the reeds, patient as a heron while he cast again, again above the ruffled water.
He was the archetype of fishermen, native to the brown-green silences of trout-pool, lake, and river, unborn into the world of chattering boxes, flickering screens outside his ring of leaves that greeted his return until the day of no return.
Only a gentleman, the searchers said, wondering at the order of his going, would first take off his cap and leave it for our guidance on the wall.
Phoebe Hesketh
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