’Eleven pounds and a half—well done the Duke’s boat!’ Ronald cried. ’Is it your first salmon, Miss Hodson?’ ’Why, certainly.’ ’You’ll have to drink its health, or there’ll be no more luck for you this season,’ said he, and he reached back for a pocket-flask. ’But where is my father?’ she said—she was anxious he should hear the news. ’Oh,’ said he coolly, ’they’ve been into a fish for the last ten minutes; I wouldna tell ye, in case it might distract ye.’ ’Have they got one?’ she cried. ’They’ve got something—and I dinna think it’s a kelt from the way they’re working.’ She clapped her hands in delight. Yes, and that involuntary little action revealed to her what she had not known before—that one of her fingers was pretty badly cut, and bleeding. ’What’s this?’ she said, but she did not heed much—now that the great beautiful gleaming fish lay in the bottom of the boat. Ronald cared a great deal more. He threw aside the flask. A cut?—it was his own stupidity was the cause of it; he ought to have known that her delicate fingers could not withstand the whirring out of the line; he should have allowed her to keep on her gloves. And nothing would do but that she must carefully bathe the wound in the fresh water of the loch; and he produced a piece of plaster; and then he cut a strip off her handkerchief, and bound up the finger so. ’What do I care?’ she said—pointing to the salmon. And then he begged her to drink a little whisky and water—for luck’s sake—though he had been rather scornful about these customs in the morning; and she complied—smiling towards him as the Netherby bride may have looked at Young Lochinvar; but yet he would not drink in her presence; he put the flask aside; and presently they were at their work again, both lines out, and the southerly breeze still keeping up. They passed the other boat. ’What weight?’ was the cry. ’Eleven and a half. Have you got one?’ ’Yes.’ ’How much?’ ’Just over seven.’ ’Duncan will be a savage man,’ said Ronald, with a laugh. ’It’s all the bad luck of his boat, he’ll be saying; though it’s good enough luck for the two first fish to be clean fish and no kelt.’