of us had been up the Bagworthy water. We knew that it brought a good
stream down, as full of fish as of pebbles; and we thought that it must
be very pretty to make a way where no way was, nor even a bullock came
down to drink. But whether we were afraid or not, I am sure I cannot
tell, because it is so long ago; but I think that had something to do
with it. For Bagworthy water ran out of Doone valley, a mile or so from
the mouth of it.

But when I was turned fourteen years old, and put into good
small-clothes, buckled at the knee, and strong blue worsted hosen,
knitted by my mother, it happened to me without choice, I may say, to
explore the Bagworthy water. And it came about in this wise.

My mother had long been ailing, and not well able to eat much; and there
is nothing that frightens us so much as for people to have no love of
their victuals. Now I chanced to remember that once at the time of
the holidays I had brought dear mother from Tiverton a jar of pickled
loaches, caught by myself in the Lowman river, and baked in the kitchen
oven, with vinegar, a few leaves of bay, and about a dozen pepper-corns.
And mother had said that in all her life she had never tasted anything
fit to be compared with them. Whether she said so good a thing out of
compliment to my skill in catching the fish and cooking them, or whether
she really meant it, is more than I can tell, though I quite believe
the latter, and so would most people who tasted them; at any rate, I
now resolved to get some loaches for her, and do them in the self-same
manner, just to make her eat a bit.

There are many people, even now, who have not come to the right
knowledge what a loach is, and where he lives, and how to catch and
pickle him. And I will not tell them all about it, because if I did,