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Many a man, far away now from "bonnie Arndilly" and the hoarse murmur of the river's roll over its rugged bed, recalls in wistful recollection the swift yet smooth flow of "the Dip;" the thundering rush of Spey against the "Red Craig," in the deep, strong water at the foot of which the big red fish leap like trout when the mellowness of the autumn is tinting into glow of russet and crimson the trees which hang on the steep bank above; the smooth restful glide into the long oily reach of the "Lady's How," in which a fisherman may spend to advantage the livelong day and then not leave it fished out; the turbulent half pool, half stream, of the "Piles," which always holds large fish lying behind the great stones or in the dead water under the daisy-sprinkled bank on which the tall beeches cast their shadows; the "Bulwark Pool;" the "Three Stones," where the grilse show their silver sides in the late May evenings; "Gilmour's" and "Carnegie's," the latter now, alas! spoiled by gravel; the quaintly named "Tam Mear's Crook" and the "Spout o' Cobblepot;" and then the dark, sullen swirls of "Sourdon," the deepest pool of Spey.

My confusion was so evident that the good dean relented and confessed that he was imposing upon my ignorance. He made me laugh heartily at the story of a poor dominie at Arndilly.

The earliest of the three Arndilly lairds of my time was the Colonel, a handsome, generous man of the old school, who was as good over High Leicestershire as he was over his own moors and on his own water, and who, while still in the prime of life, died of cholera abroad.

Thus adjured, his lordship acted at last with vigour; the sage, having gaffed the fish, abated his wrath, and, as the salmon was being "wetted," tendered his respectful apologies. In my time there have been three lairds of Arndilly, a beautiful Speyside estate which is margined by several miles of fishing water hardly inferior to any throughout the long run of the river.

Russel, the famous editor of the Scotsman, the Delane of the north country, who, pen in hand, could make a Lord Advocate squirm, and before whose gibe provosts and bailies trembled, who had drawn out leviathan with a hook from Tweed, and before whom the big fish of Forth could not stand even he, brilliant fisherman as he was, could "come nae speed ava" on Spey, as the old Arndilly water-gillie quaintly worded it.

Later, this gentleman became an assiduous fisher of men as a lay preacher, but he was as keen after salmon as he was after sinners. He hooked and played and gaffed the largest salmon I have ever heard of being caught in Spey by an angler a fish weighing forty-six pounds. The actual present laird of Arndilly is a lady, but in her son are perpetuated the fishing instincts of his forbears.