AN IMPRESSION OF AXE EDGE 123 



enthusiasm, exists it is bound to show itself. They 

 were too serious — they were even solemn, and gave 

 one the idea that they had all been recently converted 

 to Methodism and were afraid to smile or to say a frivo- 

 lous or unnecessary word lest it should be set down 

 against them by an invisible recording clerk, standing, 

 pen behind his ear, at their elbow, intently listening. 

 There was no trace of that fiery spirit, that intensity 

 of life, that passion for music, sport, drinking and 

 fighting, for something good or bad which distinguishes 

 their very next-door neighbours, the Lancastrians. 

 What is it then — the soil, the altitude and bleak cli- 

 mate, the hard conditions of life, or what ? One knows 

 of other districts where life is just as hard, where the 

 people have yet some brightness of mind, some energy, 

 some passion in them. I gave it up ; there was no 

 time for brooding over such problems ; my quest 

 was birds, not men. 



Moreover, now at the end of May the first unmis- 

 takable signs of spring were becoming visible on that 

 lofty moor of a hard and desolate aspect which I had 

 made my home. Frosts and fogs and cold winds were 

 not so persistent ; there were better intervals ; then 

 came a beautiful warm day — the first fine really warm 

 day, the natives proudly assured me, which they had 

 experienced since the previous August. The little 

 stone-enclosed fields had taken a livelier green, and on 

 wet spots and by the burns the shining yellow marsh- 

 marigolds were in bloom. But the chief change to 

 spring on the high wintry moor was in the appearance 



