Guileless, indeed, since old time has been the character of the trout of Ale. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder tells how in his boyhood he went once with a chance-met "souter" from Selkirk to the long pool in Ale above Midlem bridge, and how there, {173}by a most unsporting device, they captured the innocent trout almost by the sack-load. "We came," he says, "to a very long gravelly-bottomed pool, of an equal depth all over of from three to four feet. Here the souter seated himself; and, shortening both our rods, and fitting each of them with the three hooks tied back to back, he desired us to follow him, and then waded right into the middle of the pool. The whole water was sweltering with fine trouts, rushing in all directions from the alarm of our intrusion among them. But after we had stood stock still for a few moments, their alarm went off, and they began to settle each individually in his own place. 'There's a good one there,' said the souter, pointing to one at about three yards from him; and throwing the hooks over him, he jerked him up, and in less than six seconds he was safe in his creel. We had many a failure before we could succeed in catching one, whilst the souter never missed; but at length we hit upon the way; and so we proceeded with our guide, gently shifting our position in the pool as we exhausted each particular spot, until the souter's creel would hold no more, and ours was more than half filled with trouts, most of which were about three-quarters of a pound in weight; and very much delighted with the novelty of our sport, we made our way back to Melrose by the western side of the Eildon hills, and greatly astonished our companion with the slaughter we had made, seeing that he had been out angling for a couple of hours in the Tweed, without catching a single fin." A slaughter of the innocents, indeed! But the most inveterate poacher could not now, in any Border stream, hope to rival a feat so abominable in the eyes of present-day fishers. Nor, if he did attempt it, would he be likely to find trout so utterly devoid of guile as to submit thus quietly to be hooked out of the water one by one till the pool was emptied. Trout are better educated, if fewer in number, than they appear to have been eighty or ninety years ago. It is difficult, too, to see where the fun of this form of fishing comes in, after the rather {174}cheap excitement of catching the first one or two. But they did curious things in the name of Sport in the earlier half of last century. Many of the methods of catching salmon that are written of approvingly by Scrope, that great angler of Sir Walter's day, are now the rankest of poaching, and are prohibited by law. The mid course of Ale is through "ancient Riddel's fair domain," as Scott says in the great rhymes of William of Deloraine's midnight ride from Branksome Tower to Melrose. There is now no Riddel of Riddel.