A TIRKD TRAVELLER 95 



life except tlic cliurch bells, the chimes coming faintly 

 and musically over the wide marshes. Even the birds 

 were few. IVom time to time a hooded or carrion 

 crow flew by with his sullen kra-kra, or a ringed dotterel 

 started up from a creek or pool before me and went 

 away with his wild melancholy cry. Only the larks were 

 singing everywhere about me; but it was their winter 

 song — a medley of harsh and guttural sounds, without 

 the clear, piercing, insistent summer note; nor do they 

 rise high at this season, but after fluttering upwards a 

 distance of forty or fifty yards drop again to earth. 



Seawards I had for horizon the low ridge of the 

 sandhills overgrown with coarse grey-green grass, and 

 when on the ridge itself I looked over a vast stretch of 

 yellowish-brown sand ; for it was low tide, with the sea 

 visible as a white line of foam and the gleam of w'ater 

 more than a mile away. Here on the sandy ridge there 

 is an old sea-ruined coastguard station, and, coming to 

 it, I sat down on a pile of brushwood at the side of the 

 half-fallen buildings, and after I had been there two 

 or three minutes a bird fluttered up from the grass close 

 to my feet and perched on the wood three or four yards 

 from me. A redwing! A tired traveller from the north, 

 he had no doubt arrived at that spot during the night, 

 and was waiting to recover from his great fatigue be- 

 fore continuing his journey inland. He must have been 

 very tired to remain by himself in such beautiful weather 

 at that spot, when, close by on the further side of the 

 salt grey marsh, the green wooded country, blue in the 

 haze, was so plainly visible. For the redwing is a most 



