154 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



Going west I was at Blandford, then at Wimborne, 

 where I found nothing in the town to detain me except 

 the minster, and nothing in that but the whiteness of 

 the stones with which it is built, with here and there 

 one of a surprising red placed at random, giving the 

 structure a harlequin appearance, unlike that of any 

 other church known to me. At Wareham, a small 

 ancient village-like town in a beautiful unspoilt- 

 looking country, I was long in St. Mary's Church, 

 absorbed in the contemplation of Edward the Martyr's 

 stone coffin, when a great gloom came over the earth 

 and made the interior almost dark. Coming out I was 

 astonished to find that while I had been in there 

 with the coffin and the poor boy-king's ghost, the 

 streets outside had been turned into muddy, rushing 

 torrents, and going to a group of men standing near, 

 I asked them where all that water came from. " From 

 above, I imagine," replied one, smiling at my sim- 

 plicity, which reply brought back to my mind a 

 story of a good little boy read in my childhood. This 

 little boy had been religiously taught to say about 

 everything painful or unpleasant which befell him, 

 from the loss of a toy or a wetting or a birching, to 

 an attack of measles or mumps or scarlatina, that it 

 "came from above." Now one day, during a very 

 high wind, he was knocked down senseless by a tile 

 falling on his head, and, recovering consciousness, 

 found himself surrounded by a number of persons 

 who had come to his assistance. Picking himself up 

 and pointing to the tile at his feet which had knocked 

 him down, he solemnly remarked, "It comes from 



