John Macnab (Unabridged). Buchan John

of the river?” he asked. “Is it the Strathlarrig?”

      “No, it’s the Larrig, and that bit you like sae weel is the Minister’s Pool. There’s no a pool like it in Scotland.”

      “I believe you. There is not,” was the enthusiastic reply.

      “I mean for fish. Ye’ll no ken muckle aboot fishin’.”

      “I’ve done a bit of anglin’ at ‘ome. What do you catch here? Jack and perch?”

      “Jack and perch!” cried the keeper scornfully. “Saumon, man. Saumon up to thirty pounds’ wecht.”

      “Oh, of course, salmon. That must be a glorious sport. But a friend of mine, who has seen it done, told me it wasn’t ‘ard. He said that even I could catch a salmon.”

      “Mair like a saumon wad catch you. Now, you haud down the back road, and ye’ll come out aside the lodge gate. And dinna you come here again. The orders is strict, and if auld Angus was to get a grip o’ ye, I wadna say what wad happen. Guid day to ye, and dinna stop till ye’re out o’ the gates.”

      Leithen did as he was bid, circumnavigated the house, struck a farm track, and in time reached the high road. It was a very doleful tourist who trod the wayside heather past the Wood of Larrigmore. Never had he seen a finer stretch of water or one so impregnably defended. No bluff or ingenuity would avail an illicit angler on that open greensward, with every keeper mobilised and on guard. He thought less now of the idiocy of the whole proceeding than of the folly of plunging in the dark upon just that piece of river. There were many streams where Jim Tarras’s feat might be achieved, but he had chosen the one stretch in all Scotland where it was starkly impossible.

      The recipient of the ginger-beer was still sitting by the shafts of his cart. He seemed to be lunching, for he was carving attentively a hunk of cheese and a loaf-end with a gully-knife. As he looked up from his task Leithen saw a child of perhaps twelve summers, with a singularly alert and impudent eye, a much-freckled face, and a thatch of tow-coloured hair bleached almost white by the sun. His feet were bare, his trousers were those of a grown man, tucked up at the knees and hitched up almost under his armpits, and for a shirt he appeared to have a much-torn jersey. Weather had tanned his whole appearance into the blend of greys and browns which one sees on a hill-side boulder. The boy nodded gravely to Leithen, and continued to munch.

      Below the wood lay the half-mile where the Larrig wound sluggishly through a bog before precipitating itself into the chasm above the Bridge of Larrig. Leithen left his bicycle by the roadside and crossed the waste of hags and tussocks to the water’s edge. It looked a thankless place for the angler. The clear streams of the Larrig seemed to have taken on the colour of their banks, and to drowse dark and deep and sullen in one gigantic peat-hole. In spite of the rain of yesterday there was little current. The place looked oily, stagnant, and unfishable—a tract through which salmon after mounting the fall would hurry to the bright pools above.

      Leithen sat down in a clump of heather and lit his pipe. Something might be done with a worm after a spate, he considered, but any other lure was out of the question. The place had its merits for every purpose but taking salmon. It was a part of the Strathlarrig water outside the park pale, and it was so hopeless that it was not likely to be carefully patrolled. The high road, it was true, ran near, but it was little frequented. If only…He suddenly sat up, and gazed intently at a ripple on the dead surface. Surely that was a fish on the move…He kept his eyes on the river, until he saw something else which made him rub them, and fall into deep reflection…

      He was roused by a voice at his shoulder.

      “What for will they no let me come up to Crask ony mair?” the voice demanded in a sort of tinker’s whine.

      Leithen turned and found the boy of the ginger-beer.

      “Hullo! You oughtn’t to do that, my son. You’ll give people heart disease. What was it you asked?”

      “What…for…will…they…no…let…me come…up to Crask…ony mair?”

      “I’m sure I don’t know. What’s Crask?”

      “Ye ken it fine. It’s the big hoose up the hill. I seen you come doon frae it yoursel’ this mornin’.”

      Leithen was tempted to deny this allegation and assert his title of tourist, but something in the extreme intelligence of the boy’s face suggested that such a course might be dangerous. Instead he said, “Tell me your name, and what’s your business at Crask?”

      “My name’s Benjamin Bogle, but I get Fish Benjie frae most folks. I’ve sell’t haddies and flukes to Crask these twa months. But this mornin’ I was tell’t no to come back, and when I speired what way, the auld wife shut the door on me.”

      A recollection of Sir Archie’s order the night before returned to Leithen’s mind, and with it a great sense of insecurity. The argus-eyed child, hot with a grievance, had seen him descend from Crask, and was therefore in a position to give away the whole show. What chance was there for secrecy with this malevolent scout hanging around?

      “Where do you live, Benjie?”

      “I bide in my cart. My father’s in jyle, and my mither’s lyin’ badly in Muirtown. I sell fish to a’ the gentry.”

      “And you want to know why you can’t sell them at Crask?”

      “Aye, I wad like to ken that. The auld wife used to be a kind body and gie me jeely pieces. What’s turned he into a draygon?”

      Leithen was accustomed, in the duties of his profession, to quick decisions on tactics, and now he took one which was destined to be momentous.

      “Benjie,” he said solemnly, “there’s a lot of things in the world that I don’t understand, and it stands to reason that there must be more that you don’t. I’m in a position in which I badly want somebody to help me. I like the look of you. You look a trusty fellow and a keen one. Is all your time taken up selling haddies?”

      “‘Deed no. Just twa hours in the mornin’, and twa hours at nicht when I gang doun to the cobles at Inverlarrig. I’ve a heap o’ time on my hands.”

      “Good. I think I can promise that you may resume your trade at Crask. But first I want you to do a job for me. There’s a bicycle lying by the roadside. Bring it up to Crask this evening between six and seven. Have you a watch?”

      “No, but I can tell the time braw and fine.”

      “Go to the stables and wait for me there. I want to have a talk with you.” Leithen produced half a crown, on which the grubby paw of Fish Benjie instantly closed.

      “And look here, Benjie. You haven’t seen me here, or anybody like me. Above all, you didn’t see me come down from Crask this morning. If anybody asks you questions, you only saw a man on a bicycle on the road to Inverlarrig.”

      The boy nodded, and his solemn face flickered for a second with a subtle smile.

      “Well, that’s a bargain.” Leithen got up from his couch and turned down the river, making for the Bridge of Larrig, where the highway crossed. He looked back once, and saw Fish Benjie wheeling his bicycle into the undergrowth of the wood. He was in two minds as to whether he had done wisely in placing himself in the hands of a small ragamuffin, who for all he knew might be hand-in-glove with the Strathlarrig keepers. But the recollection of Benjie’s face reassured him. He did not look like a boy who would be the pet of any constituted authority; he had the air rather of the nomad against whom the orderly waged war. There had been an impish honesty in his face, and Leithen, who had a weakness for disreputable urchins, felt that he had taken the right course. Besides, the young sleuth-hound had got on his trail, and there had been nothing for it but to make him an ally.

      He crossed the bridge, avoided the Crask road, and struck up hill by a track which followed the ravine of a burn. As he walked his mind went back to a stretch on a Canadian river, a stretch of still unruffled water warmed all day by a July sun. It had been as full as it could hold of salmon, but no artifice