A CLOUD OF THUNDER 207 



will be fine,&quot; they said ; and the Meteorological Office 

 concurred. The vertical rush of hot air that carried the 

 flies upwards is like a witch on a broom, a cause of 

 strange and sudden changes ; and no one can forecast 

 the issue of its conflict with the cold forces into which it 

 drives its wedge. The mercury is as poor a prophet as 

 the swallow, the countryman, or the man of science. 

 Within a few hours the swallows, which seemed to have 

 lost nine-tenths of their number, were skimming the tops 

 of the grasses ; the windows were dark with flies ; the 

 white butterflies, as numerous as white horses in the Bay 

 when the west wind is stiff, were all becalmed : every one 

 clung with dull and folded wings to a protecting blade or 

 leaf. Clouds had thickened and fallen. They were so 

 near that their influence was on all life. How should 

 one s mood not be conscious of so close and dark a 

 roofing ? 



The sun s away, 



and the bird estranged ; 



The wind has dropped, 

 and the sky s deranged : 



Summer has stopped. 



Yet, for the sake of the pessimists be it said, an hour later 

 swifts coursed again through lofty planes of air just now 

 invisible under the stress of the lowering nimbus. 



6, 



As the sun climbs high it seems to unloose little bouts 

 of extra heat on this place and that, as if corridors of a 

 less resistant air let the rays through* You would hardly 

 be surprised if they served as a match to the dried and 

 withered underpart of the gorse, and the heath, sun-fired, 

 went up in flames. Their influence is not quite so 



