156 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



and was more frequent, accompanied with vivid 

 flashes of forked lightning which, one would imagine, 

 would have sent the people in terror to their homes. 

 For a very little more and the storm would be directly 

 over us and the whole crowd deluged with rain. 

 But though it remained near us for about an hour 

 and a half, without losing that black, exceedingly 

 threatening aspect, with occasional little tempests 

 of rain, it did not quite reach us, and I then noticed, 

 when strolling about the ground, that there was not 

 the slightest appearance of apprehension or nervous- 

 ness in the people. The fun and frolic continued with- 

 out a break through it all until, at nine o'clock, the 

 people dispersed to their homes. 



Now I can imagine that the people I had been 

 staying with on those cold, harsh moors in Derby- 

 shire would have stared and gasped with astonishment 

 at such a scene, and would perhaps have refused to 

 believe that it was an everyday scene in that place, 

 that this was how the people spent their summer 

 evening after each day's work. I can imagine, too, 

 that some nonagenarian or centenarian, who had 

 from his youth dreamed of a freer, sweeter, more 

 joyous life for the people of his country, on coming 

 down from some such unchanged district as the one 

 just mentioned and looking upon the scene I have 

 described, would be able to say from his very heart, 

 "Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace." 



Quitting Poole, I ran for ten miles along a con- 

 tinuous thoroughfare, through Bournemouth to Christ- 

 church, with the ugliness and infernal jar and clang 



