"Good _Gedd!_" he was heard to say--if indeed the words were no stronger--as, mercifully, the hounds picked up the scent again at that moment, and the chase swept on. There are none so blind as those who will not see, however, and nothing more was ever heard of this episode. But report has it that the lord of that manor has no great partiality for kippered salmon. But salmon-poaching is perhaps not entirely confined to the human species. There have been instances known where dogs have been the most accomplished of poachers--generally, it must be said, in conjunction with a two-legged companion. The lurching, vagabond hound that one sees not infrequently in certain parts of the country, following suspicious-looking characters clad in coats with suspiciously roomy pockets, might, no doubt, be easily trained to take salmon from burns, or from the shallow water into which, in the autumn, the fish often run. And, to the present writer's mind, a black curly-coated retriever recalls himself as a poacher of extreme ability. A most lovable dog was "Nero," but--at least as regards salmon--he was a most immoral breaker of the law. It was well, perhaps, that he lived in days when water-bailiffs were neither so numerous, nor so strict in the execution of their duties, as they now are, for nothing could cure him of the habit, when he saw a fish struggling up a shallow stream, of dashing in, seizing that salmon in his teeth, and laying it at the feet of his embarrassed master, who, far from being connected with the poaching fraternity, was, indeed, a magistrate, to whom the gift of a salmon in such circumstances brought only confusion. After all, is there not generally a something lovable in the man who poaches purely for _sport's_ sake? Who can fail to mourn the end of poor, harmless, gallant, drucken Jocky B----, who gave his life for his love of what he conceived to be sport? "Here's daith or glory for Jocky," he cried, when the watchers surrounded him, leaving but the one possibility of escape. And in that swollen, wintry torrent into which he plunged, the Bailiff Death laid hands on Jocky. Perhaps even now in the shades below, his "ghost may land the ghosts of fish"; mayhap, with a cleek such as that to which his cold fingers yet stiffly clung when they found him in the deep pool, he may still, now and again, be permitted with joyous heart to lift from the waters that ripple through Hades spectral fish of fabulous dimensions.