26 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



Norfolk country of winding roads and lanes, old farm- 

 houses and small red villages which appear almost de- 

 serted. As I passed through one the other day, the 

 thought was in my mind that in this village not one 

 inhabitant remained, when all at once I caught sight of 

 a very old man, shrunk and lean and grey, standing in 

 a cottage garden behind its grey palings. His clothes, 

 too, like his hair and face, were a dull grey, so like the 

 hue of the old weathered and lichen-stained wood of 

 the palings as to make him almost invisible. It was 

 an instance of protective resemblance in the human 

 species. He was standing motionless, leaning on his 

 stick, peering at me out of his pale dim eyes as if 

 astonished at the sight of a stranger in that lonely 

 place. 



But I love the solitariness on the side towards the 

 sea best, the green marsh extending to Holkham on 

 your left hand, once a salt flat inundated by the sea 

 but long reclaimed by the making of that same green 

 bank I have mentioned — the causeway which connects 

 Wells with the beach. On the right side of this bank 

 is the estuary by which small ships may creep up to 

 the town at high tide, and the immense grey saltings 

 extending miles and miles away to Blakeney. Between 

 the flats and the sea are the sand-hills, rough with grey 

 marram grass; then the beach, and, if the tide is up, 

 the sea; but when the water is out, you look across 

 miles of smooth and ribbed sands, with no life visible on 

 its desolate expanse except a troop of gulls resting in 

 a long white line, and very far out a few men and boys 



