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Excerpt: ST. BRIGID'S FLOOD.

Four or five men were gathered together that evening in Forsyth's rooms, talking the usual talk of anglers when they congregate -- flies, bait, good days, bad days, droughts, and floods. Forsyth was just expressing his preference for the extreme type of flood river.

" A regular mountain stream, you know -- no lake on it, no feeders to speak of, but just the scourings of the hills. When it comes down there's no need to bother about waiting till it clears; you watch till it stops rising, and then fish at once; and some time or other when you're on the water you're pretty sure to hit the psychological moment.

" " Yes; but how long does it last ? " put in Legge. "Oh, an hour, two hours, six hours.

But it's amusing, anyhow, to watch the water changing; it keeps up the interest -- it's dramatic. I've seen a stream at Carrick get up five feet in the night and go down to where it was in the forenoon.

" " If you come to that," said Grayson, knocking his pipe on the mantelpiece, " I've seen a flood get up five feet in five minutes." Grayson was a man none of us had seen before.

Forsyth had picked him up somewhere in Ireland. So, although what he said sounded pretty steep, none of us protested.

"You mean a tide wave," Legge suggested politely. "Not in the least; just a flood out of the mountains like what Forsyth talks of.

And if you like them dramatic, Forsyth, you'd have had your heart's content that time." "Well," said Forsyth, "I know they get the devil's own floods in the West of Ireland; but (less)