195.
Dinant to Antwerp.
1897.
July 19.
  Clear and really very warm with light S. wind.
At daybreak this morning I heard a Blackbird, a Wren and
a Hedge Sparrow singing. The last is the bird whose song I
have thought so much like a Song Sparrow's. It is like that
of a young Song Sparrow warbling in broken snatches in autumn.
  We left Dinant at 10 A.M. for Antwerp. Alighting for a
moment at Chastre a small station in the Province of Brabant,
about ten miles north of Namur the train went off without me.
I found my way to a cafí© very small, very primitive and very
neat, where a gendarme interviewed me and asked all manner of
questions as to my business in the place, whence I had come,
wither I was going, etc. As neither [he] nor anyone else about
the place could speak or understand a word of English I found
it difficult to satisfy his official curiosity. A glass of 
beer and a cigar, however, won his confidence and we parted
 excellent friends.
  After a primitive but by no means bad dinner at the cafí© 
I strolled through the village, a picturesque little place
with thatched stone houses and large barns into which the far-
mers were bringing loads of hay and grain from the neighboring
fields. It was midday and very warm and sultry, so I heard
but few birds singing.  Black redstarts and Pied Wagtails