In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful Speyside estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water hardly inferior to any throughout the long run of the river. Many a man, far away now from "bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the river's roll over its rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the swift yet smooth flow of "the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against the "Red Craig," in the deep, strong water at the foot of which the big red fish leap like trout when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting into glow of russet and crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank above; the smooth restful glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's How," in which a fisherman may spend to advantage the livelong day and then not leave it fished out; the turbulent half pool, half stream, of the "Piles," which always holds large fish lying behind the great stones or in the dead water under the daisy-sprinkled bank on which the tall beeches cast their shadows; the "Bulwark Pool;" the "Three Stones," where the grilse show their silver sides in the late May evenings; "Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter now, alas! spoiled by gravel; the quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and the "Spout o' Cobblepot;" and then the dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon," the deepest pool of Spey. The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and who, while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad. Good in the saddle and with the salmon rod, the Colonel was perhaps best behind a gun, with which he was not less deadly among the salmon of the Spey than among the grouse of Benaigen. His relative, old Lord Saltoun, was hard put to it once in the "Lady's How" with a thirty-pound salmon which he had hooked foul, and which, in its full vigour, was taking all manner of liberties with him, making spring after spring clean out of the water. The beast was so rebellious and strong that the old lord found it harder to contend with than with the Frenchmen who fought so stoutly with him for the possession of Hougomont. The Colonel, fowling-piece in hand, was watching the struggle, and seeing that Lord Saltoun was getting the worst of it awaited his opportunity when the big salmon's tail was in the air after a spring, and, firing in the nick of time, cut the fish's spine just above the tail, hardly marking it elsewhere. The Colonel occasionally fished the river with cross-lines, which are still legal although their use is now considered rather the "Whitechapel game." He resorted to the cross-lines, not in greed for fish but for the sake of the shooting practice they afforded him. When the hooked fish were struggling and in their struggles showing their tails out of water, he several times shot two right and left breaking the spine in each case close to the tail.