156 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



me than the sight of towns, villages, castles, ruins, and 

 cathedrals, and more than adventures among the 

 people. 



This, then, is but a hasty and careless itinerary. 



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 S. 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 simplicity, 

 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, re- 



