cupied with the task they loved so well, and I made up my mind
to see the result of all this flower-gathering next day in some of the
village churches in the neighbourhood--Fovant, Teffant Evias, Chilmark,
Swallowcliffe, Tisbury, and Fonthill Bishop. I had counted on some
improvement in the weather--some bright sunshine to light up the
flower-decorated interiors; but Easter Sunday proved colder than ever,
with the bitter north-east still blowing, the grey travelling cloud
still covering the sky; and so to get the full benefit of the bitterness
I went instead to spend my day on the top of the biggest down above the
valley. That was Whitesheet Hill, and forms the highest part of the long
ridge dividing the valleys of the Ebble and Nadder.

It was roughest and coldest up there, and suited my temper best, for
when the weather seems spiteful one finds a grim sort of satisfaction
in defying it. On a genial day it would have been very pleasant on
that lofty plain, for the flat top of the vast down is like a plain in
appearance, and the earthworks on it show that it was once a populous
habitation of man. Now because of the wind and cloud its aspect was bare
and bleak and desolate, and after roaming about for an hour, exploring
the thickest furze patches, I began to think that my day would have to
be spent in solitude, without a living creature to keep me company. The
birds had apparently all been blown away and the rabbits were staying
at home in their burrows. Not even an insect could I see, although
the furze was in full blossom; the honey-suckers were out of sight and
torpid, and the bloom itself could no longer look "unprofitably gay," as
the poet says it does. "Not even a wheatear!" I said, for I had counted
on that bird in the intervals between the storms, although I knew I
should not hear his wild delightful warble in such weather.

Then, all at once, I beheld that very bird, a solitary female,
flittering on over the flat ground before me, perching on the little
green ant-mounds and flirting its tail and bobbing as if greatly excited
at my presence in that lonely place. I wondered where its mate was,
following it from place to place as it flew, determined now I had found
a bird to keep it in sight. Presently a great blackness appeared low
down in the cloudy sky, and rose and spread, travelling fast towards
me, and the little wheatear fled in fear from it and vanished from sight
over the rim of the down. But I was there t