The Keys of the Kingdom by A. J. Cronin Page A

He stopped, supporting his short burly form on the gaff, his ruddy face screwed up, rather put out, beneath his blaze of red hair. I do love Rusty Mac. I think he has some fondness for me and perhaps the simplest explanation is that we are so dourly Scottish and both of us fishers … the only two in the school. When Lady Frazer endowed the College from her Stinchar properties, Rusty claimed the river as his own. The jingo in the Holywell Monitor beginning,
I’ll not have my pools
Whipped to ribbons by fools …
    neatly takes off his attitude – for he’s a mad fisher. There’s a story of him, in the middle of mass at Frazer Castle, which Holywell serves, when his staunch friend, the Presbyterian Gillie, stuck his head through the window of the oratory bursting with suppressed excitement. “Your reverence! They’re rising like fury in Lochaber Pool!” Never was a mass more quickly completed. The stupefied congregation, including Her Ladyship, was pattered over, blessed at breakneck speed; then a dark streak, not unlike the local concept of the Devil, was seen flying from the sacristy. “ Jock! Jock! What flee are they taking?”
    ‘Now, he looked at me disgustedly. “Not a fish in sight. Just when I wanted one for the notables!” The Bishop of the diocese and the retiring principal of our English Seminary at San Morales were coming to lunch at Holywell that day.
    ‘I said, “ There’s a fish in the Glebe Pool, sir.”
    ‘“There’s no fish in the river at all, not even a grilse … I’ve been out since six.”
    ‘“It’s a big one.”
    ‘“Imaginary!”
    ‘“I saw it there yesterday, under the weir, but of course I didn’t dare try for it.”
    ‘From beneath his sandy brows he gave me his dour smile. “You’re a perverse demon, Chisholm. If you want to waste your time – you’ve my dispensation.” He handed me his rod and walked off.
    ‘I went down to the Glebe Pool, my heart leaping as it always does at the sound of running water. The fly on the leader was a Silver Doctor, perfect for the size and colour of the river. I began to fish the pool. I fished it for an hour. Salmon are painfully scarce this season. Once I thought I saw the movement of a dark fin in the shadows of the opposite bank. But I touched nothing. Suddenly I heard a discreet cough. I swung round. Rusty Mac, dressed in his best blacks, wearing gloves and his ceremonial top hat, had stopped, on his way to meet his guest at Doune Station, to condole with me.
    ‘“It’s these large ones, Chisholm –” he said with a sepulchral grin – “they’re always the hardest!”
    ‘As he spoke, I made a final cast thirty yards across the pool. The fly fell exactly on the spume eddying beneath the far edge of the weir. The next instant I felt the fish, struck, and was fast in it.
    ‘“Ye have one!” Rusty cried. Then the salmon jumped – four feet in the air. Though for my own part I nearly dropped, the effect on Rusty was stupendous. I could feel him stiffen beside me. “In the name of God!” he muttered in stricken awe. The salmon was the biggest I had ever seen, here, in the Stinchar, or in my father’s Tweedside bothy. “Keep his head up!” Rusty suddenly shouted. “Man, man – give him the butt!”
    ‘I was doing my best. But now the fish was in control. It set off, downstream, in a mad tearing rush. I followed. And Rusty followed me.
    ‘The Stinchar, at Holywell, is not like the Tweed. It runs in a brown torrent through pines and gorges, making not inconsiderable somersaults over slippery boulders and high shaley ledges. At the end of ten minutes, Rusty Mac and I were half a mile downstream, somewhat the worse for wear. But we still stayed with the fish.
    ‘“Hold him, hold him!” Mac was hoarse from shouting. “You fool, you fool, don’t let him get in that slack!” The brute, of course, was already in the slack, sulking in a deep hole, with the leader ensnared in a mess of sunken roots.
    ‘“Ease him,