'TRUTH AT THE BOTTOM OP A' MARL-PIT. 55 



warned me that the bright little sentinels of Heaven 

 were taking one by one their watch-posts, and 

 beckoning me to follow the example which one 

 weary toiler after another had set,* even to the very 

 Plough that lay sleeping* in its bed in the half- 

 finished furrow at my side, as if nothing would ever 

 move it again. And then through the still night air, 

 as I moved tardily homewards, there would come a 

 sound a strange sound which the diggers of those 

 ancient marl-pits never heard by day or night, 

 Was it a beetle or some other lazy insect, homeward 

 bound, that made that peculiar humm which seemed 

 to thrill through the atmosphere, far away at first 

 then gradually nearer, and then louder and more 

 tremulous as a gust of wind brushed by then fainter 

 and fainter still and then gone! What was it? 

 if the ear could measure miles, it might seem to have 

 traversed some seven or eight, before it reached me. 

 Oh ! ye who tilled these fields and dug these marl- 

 pits in the days of narrow lanes and pack-saddles, 

 what would you have said to that Mail-Train that 

 was flying like a meteor through the night, upon its 

 track of polished iron ; annihilating DISTANCE, yet 



* ' et jam nox humida ccelo 



Prascipitat, suadentque cadentia sidera somnos.' 



