But when he had seen, how much it had meant. Everything was abstract now, personality had gone. Flashes came back of things seen and remembered, but they were not clear-cut. Little bits in a wood, a pool in a hedge with red flowers everywhere, a red-coated man in the distance on a white horse galloping, the sea with violet patches over grey where the seaweed stained it, silver where the sun rays met it. A gull coming up from beneath a cliff. There was a certain comfort in remembering. This would have been a good fishing day. There was no sun, yet enough heat to draw the chub up to the surface. The boat would glide silently on the stream, the withies would droop quietly to dabble in the water. Where the two met the chub lay, waiting for something to eat. And he would prepare his rod and he would throw the bright speckled fly to alight gently on the water, and to swim on the current past mysterious doors in the bathing green. The boat floated gently too, a bird sang and then was silent, and he would watch the jaunty fly, watch for the white, greedy mouth that would come up, for the swirl when he would flick lightly, and the fight, with another panting, gleaming fish to be mired in struggles on the muddy floor of the boat. He would go down the river, catching fish. The day would draw away as if sucked down in the east, where a little rose made as if to play with pearl and grey and blue. There were chub he had missed, four or five he would have caught, and more further on. A kingfisher might shoot out to dart down the river, a guilty thing in colours. More rarely a grey heron would raise himself painfully to flap awkwardly away. He would go on, casting his fly, placing it here or there, watching it always, and now and then, with little touches, steering it from floating leaves. And it would become more difficult to see, and the only sound would be the plops the fish made as they sent out rings in eating flies on the water. One last chub in the boat and he would turn to row back through the haze that was rising from the river. The water chattered at the prow, he would notice suddenly that the crows were no longer cawing in the trees on the hill, but had gone to sleep. He would yawn and begin to think of dinner. It was a long way back. He would come to the ferry, where the boats were tied up, where they huddled darkly together. There would be the rattle of the chain, and the feeling that something else was finished. Voices would come from behind the lighted blinds of the inn; a dog would bark, a laugh perhaps, while the other bank was thick with shadows. He would carry the oars and rowlocks to put them as always in the shed, and he would climb the gate, the rod tiresome, the creel heavy. A quick walk home across the fields, for there was nothing to see in the dark. An owl perhaps and a bat or two.