"By Jove! there's another bite," exclaimed R——, as P——'s reel spread the tidings with the tongue of a Dutch alarum clock. After a little play, the salmon ceased to live in the Toptdal River.
"I can't tell how he manages," said R——, in a sort of soliloquy. "I don't get a rise in two days. My flies must be bad; or, I think, P—— always takes the best place." And R—— pulled his fly-book from his pouch, and began to examine the flies attentively, one by one, from the largest to the smallest.
"Your flies are very good," I observed; "but you have not application. Look at P——; he is part of that rock, apathetic to every idea of life, but the idea that he sees his fly."
"A great deal of it is luck," answered R——; "but let us go to breakfast. I am preciously thirsty; I must swill something."
We both rose, and walked towards the cottage. The sun had now risen above the tops of the mountains, and shone brightly in the very centre of the valley through which the Toptdal River wound. Not a cloud spotted the sky, and the declining languid motion of the atmosphere gave token of a torrid noon. Entering into jocular conversation with our Anglo-Norwegian friend, who was bustling about the cottage on our behalf, we became so intimate and open-hearted, that R—— begged him to partake of breakfast if he had not eaten his own; and seating himself in the third vacant chair, the Norwegian did as much justice to our hospitality, as the hungry steer does to clover. Time wore on, for the shade of the tall trees became short and shorter; and when our little stout Northern guest went from under the cottage roof, to give some orders to a labourer, I observed that the huge flaps of his felt hat sheltered his round projecting van and bulbous flank, and, that, to the contemplative man with downcast eye, his whole frame, fat though it were, would appear quashed into a circular shadow moving along the ground.
After breakfast, R—— lit his pipe, and the Norwegian made a quid both round and opaque, and bowing to us, stuffed it into his mouth. Its proper arrangement with his tongue kept him silent for a second, and in that second, we heard the prolonged, faint call of a man in distress; but it was so indistinct, that the gentle rustling of the juniper leaf interrupted our attention to it.
"Is not this delicious?" observed R—— to me; and the gray-blue tobacco-smoke spouted, like a small fountain, from his mouth. "In London I should be just thinking of getting out of bed, and here I have been up these nine hours, and eaten like a bricklayer."
"I should not mind living here, and like this, all my life," I answered, "and paddling about on that river."
"Ja," interposed the Norwegian in a broken dialect, but he thought himself a good English scholar; "dat is goot, but you not tak care you roltz down de foss; one old vomans roltz down de foss."
"Ah?" said I.