242 Summer Studies of Birds and Books chap. 



presently wrap Bindon in its soft and moist embrace. 

 Should we be caught in it we might chance to see a 

 spectre, as I did the other night when strolling here 

 in deepening twilight ; a human figure approached 

 me coming up the farmer's white track, and when I 

 went to meet (as I thought) my friend, it suddenly 

 and utterly vanished, and not a living thing was 

 to be seen upon the bare hill-side. What other 

 mysteries has Bindon yet in store for me ? 



Let us take one last look before we descend ; 

 first at the gray and misty sea, then by St. Aldhelm's 

 Head and Ballard down by Swanage to Poole 

 Harbour and the little ancient town of Wareham, at 

 the eastern end of that great heath of which the 

 Dorsetshire novelist has told more than one sad 

 tale ; and so northward along the distant line of 

 those "crowns o' Do'set downs" of which the 

 Dorsetshire poet has sung in his tender mood and 

 qviaint language, till the eye reaches in the west the 

 monument to Nelson's Hardy, and Weymouth Bay 

 and Portland, where on the Bill the two warning 

 lights will soon begin to twinkle. And lastly, as 

 the russet and lavender tints of autumn twilight 

 begin to spread over the hills nearer at hand, it is 

 pleasant to let the eye drop upon that little village 

 nestling in the deep curve of the valley below us — 

 our home at night as Bindon is our home by day, 

 from whose dark red chimneys " azure pillars of 



