CHAPTER IX 



A Tired Traveller 



(1 ' urdus iliacus) 



It was fine weather on the morning of the first day of 

 November on the east coast. Coming out, I looked 

 for grey clouds travelling before a biting wind, a grey 

 clammy mist brooding on the flat desolate land, and 

 found, instead, a clear day without a vapour, the 

 sun shining very brightly, the air almost still and 

 deliciously warm. It was, for November, the most 

 perfect day I could have had for a ramble on the grey 

 flat saltings between Wells-next-the-Sea and Stiffkey : 

 they are not as in summer at this time of year, but have 

 the compensating charm of solitariness. I had them 

 all to myself on that morning ; there was no sound of 

 human life except the church bells, the chimes coming 

 faintly and musically over the wide marshes. Even 

 the birds were few. From 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 



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