THE FALL 



The months, from mid- April, the cottage has 



Swallows been their parents' home. Their sweet, fleet 

 Retire forms will be sadly missed, and their 



music of the eaves, that mysterious, long- 

 sustained warbling that comes from the nest, hour 

 after hour. At night, it suggests a lullaby, as if the birds 

 are crooning one another to sleep. They have flown on 

 the first stage of their journey to Africa, to some deep 

 valley of the South Downs, running seawards. To such 

 valleys the swallows bred in the villages at the foot of 

 the Downs have also retired, and there may be seen in 

 some force, lingering on the verge of the sea, as if 

 loath to leave this pleasant land. 



THE FALL 



As Spring " comes slowly up our way," Autumn's 

 victory over Summer is a long-drawn 

 Autumn s affair. A bouquet of Summer flowers may 

 Victory be picked to-day on the chalk downs, 

 where harebells hold their own, or where a 

 second crop of honeysuckle perfumes a hedge. Oak- 

 woods cling long to their midsummer greenery, but 

 Autumn gains an early and sweeping victory in the 

 beech-woods, now turning to a foxy red; Autumn's 

 torch will set half a wood ablaze in one night. The 

 gales which followed the equinox have stripped some 

 trees of leaves : those gales which are only to be expected 

 before and after the halcyon days of St. Luke's Summer, 

 and are not unwelcome in rustic weather-lore, as is 

 suggested by the old toast to 



A good October and a good blast 



To blow the hog acorn and mast. 



141 



