Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER XL Slaughtering the pike Trimmers and liggers Catching bait Setting the trimmers Plenty of pike, and a big one The joys of a keeper’s life. PETER’S mind was now bent on the slaughter of the pike on Saturday, at which Gerard, Mr. Knox, and three or four others were to assist. Peter overhauled Quadling’s implements of destruction, and found two score of the ordinary wood trimmers, with hooks and lines. He did not consider these enough for the purpose, so he proceeded to make a number of liggers, as used in the adjacent Broad district. A bundle of dry reeds, as long and as thick as the forearm of a man, is cut, and the ends tightly bound with string, and the ligger is complete. It floats well, and does not frighten the fish. The line is wound round it, and secured by a half-hitch, which the run of a pike dislodges, thus permitting the spare line to run out. It did not take Peter very long to make fifty of these rough-and- ready contrivances, but when he had made them he was rather nonplussed to find that Quadling had not a sufficient store of double hooks and lines. The village shop, however, afforded plenty of single eel-hooks and string, and the keeper’s lumber- room produced a quantity of soft copper wire in the form of rabbit and hare snares confiscated from poachers. It was an easy matter to whip a couple of eel-hooks back to back, and mount them on a short length of wire.
Now, how shall we get some bait, Mr. Quadling 1 Hava you a casting-net 1

No, but somewhere about there is a fine-meshed drag-net we took from some poachers in the trout stream. If you can find that it will do capitally. After some search Peter found it, and carrying it and a couple of large watering-cans down to the lake, he proceeded to catch the bait. He chose one of the shallo…