Again, there are some young lads searching under the stones for _ecrevisses_, the freshwater prawns, much in request, but giving very little food for a great deal of trouble. Near these fishers the pike plies his busy sportsman's life below the surface, and I have sometimes seen a poor little trout leap high into the air to escape from the long-nosed pursuer, who followed him even out of the water, and snapped his jaws on the sweet morsel impudently. This sound, added to the very suspicious appearance of the Rob Roy gliding among the islands, decides the doubtful point with a duck, the leader of a flock of wild ducks that have been swimming down stream in front of me with a quick glance on each side, every one of them seemingly indignant at this intrusion on their haunts; at last they find it really will not do, so with a scream and a spring they flap the water and rise in a body to seek if there be not elsewhere at least some one nook to nestle in where John Bull does not come. That bell you hear tinkling is at the ferry, to call the ferryman who lives at the other side, and he will jump into his clumsy boat, which is tied to a pulley running on a rope stretched tight across the river. He has only to put his oar obliquely on the gunwale, and the transverse pressure of the current brings the boat rapidly to the other bank. Paddling on, after a chat with the ferryman (and he is sure to be ready for that), a wonderful phenomenon appears. We see a house, large, new, and of two stories high, it has actually moved. We noticed it a few minutes ago, and now it has changed its position. I gaze in astonishment, and while we ponder, lo! the whole house entirely disappears. Now, the true explanation of this is soon found when we get round the next corner of the reach;--the house is a great wooden bathing "etablissement," built on a barge, and it is being slowly dragged up the stream. After wonder comes sentiment. Three women are seen on the river-bank evidently in great alarm: a mother, a daughter, and a servant maid, who searched in vain for two boys, supposed to have gone away to fish, but now missing for many hours. They eagerly inquired if I had seen the lads, and implored me with tears to give them advice. I tried all I could to recollect, but no! I had not seen the boys, and so the women went away distracted, and left me sorrowful--who would not be so at a woman's tears, a mother's too? But suddenly, when toiling in the middle of a very difficult piece of rock-work, lowering the boat, I remembered having seen those boys, so I ran over the fields after the anxious mamma and soon assured her the children had been safe an hour ago, and their faithful servant with them, but that _he_ had become the fisherman, and they, like boys, had got tired of the rod, and were playing with a goat.