It is a cold, grey world that lies waiting for the dawn—a misty sky, in which one pale planet glimmers; a hazy sea, whose fretted levels shine faintly in the moonlight; shadowy hills, along whose winding line, here darkened with clustering woodlands, and there whitened by still slumbering hamlets, a grey mist hangs. It hangs, too, like a vast canopy, over the wide plain, whose sunburnt meadows seem to melt away into an infinite distance; and along the wandering river whose brown flood loiters idly to the sea.

A silent world, for the most part. Even the voice of the river, that but now was chafing loud against the shingle bar piled high along the shore, is failing in the swift inrush of the tide. It is a slow moving and taciturn stream that, as it wound along the level fringes of the hills, long since forgot the sunshine and the laughter and the crystal clearness of its youth, when, under banks that were hung with fern and meadow-sweet, it sang over the brown pebbles of its bed, round

But the tide, that is hushing the hoarse song of the river, swells louder every moment the troubled roar of the sea, whose grey waves are plunging in over the rattling shingle and the shining sand.

And as the light of dawning strengthens over the low grey hills to the eastward, other sounds break in upon the stillness. Far off across the moor a curlew calls. A heron who all night long, it may be, has been keeping his lone vigil in the marshes, and who is now flying leisurely home-ward to the hills, lets fall a muttered croak in passing—midnight revellers both. But the white gulls that rise and fall and toy like butterflies above the broadening stream calling to each other with discordant voices, are children of the sunshine.

Of the sunshine, too, is the music of a lark, who, high up in the grey mist, brooding like a fate over the brown and thirsty meadows, seems to hover at the very gates of dawn. Yet there is a sound of the sea even on his silvery tongue. Among the sweet notes of his familiar "babble of green fields," he brings in at times the cry of the curlew and the whistle of the plover.

A breath of the sea there is, too, in the chatter of the starling on the roof above. The croak of the heron and the call of the whimbrel are common speech with him. And now he even imitates the creak of the cordage on the coasting smack swinging in the stream yonder, where two men are busy setting the old brown sails.

From the cliffs that break the round swell of the hill a line of daws are streaming, eager, clamorous, on the wing for their hunting ground upon the moor. One troop has wheeled aside to alight among the boughs of a cherry-tree in a little walled-in space of garden at some distance from the house. The farmer, who has just appeared, with his milking-pail upon his shoulder, and who looks up to nod a friendly greeting, pauses a moment in the doorway to watch the marauders at their work, while the old sheep-dog waits wondering at his side.

Suddenly, far out on the moor, beyond the cattle that stand motionless, expectant, all looking this way, a tall figure looms out of the mist, and across the fields comes a strange cry:

The old dog hears, and bounds forward to his work. But the sleek and sober herd, never turning their heads to look behind them, move slowly, as by common impulse, converging fanwise to the gate. Men in white smocks, and with shining pails upon their backs, are striding through the meadows towards the farm. And all the while the milking call sounds at intervals across the fields:—

But along the side of the green headland that, beyond the old farm-buildings stretches a mile or more into the sea, silence still reigns, save for the sound of the waves, for the plaintive cry of a curlew or the clamour of a troop of gulls.

When a gleam of sunshine breaks the grey veil of cloud, changing the sombre hues of the mud flats to warm tones of brown and purple, turning to gold the broad beach and the ragged sand-hills, birds, unseen before, start swiftly into view. Here a tall curlew stalks solemnly along, erect and watchful. There an inky crow is picking dainty morsels from the ooze. And here a party of trim black-headed gulls have collected round some treasure trove left by the last tide. A troop of sandpipers sweeps along, now flashing in a hundred points of silver in the sunlight; now, as they wheel, all lost again in the brown hues of their haunts. As far as the eye can reach are scattered gulls, shieldrakes, oyster-catchers, rock-doves even, foraging by the edge of the water, falling back before the rising tide.

But sounds of life are faint, even now. Among the boulders pipits flit at times with feeble cries. And a brood of young kestrels lately fledged, sail and soar along the cliff farther on, and scream as if in defiance of the wind, against which their keen wings are beating. The rocky brows that overhang the shore are thick with grasses and sweet bedstraw, with flags and mullein, and tall evening primrose. In the crannies campion and sea-pink are rooted. Here a yellow poppy trembles in the wind, and there a great cluster of samphire fills a rocky cleft. There are tufts of it quite low down, but it is a plant that always grows above high-water mark, and many a shipwrecked sailor, thrown ashore among the rocks, has taken heart again when, in the darkness, his despairing grasp has tightened on those strangely smelling leaves. It is St. Peter's plant—Saint Pierre, sampier, samphire.

Now the shrill screaming of the kestrels rises louder still, the fierce cry of the old birds mingling with the plaintive clamour of their brood. Now one of them, sweeping round the headland, poises a moment in the air, his wings motionless, his tail spread wide, his figure dark upon the western sky. Slowly stooping, he alights on the crown of a rocky pinnacle, a crag that stands out from the cliff like the tower of some old stronghold; and, with feet spread wide, clutching with his strong claws the rifted rock, his head lowered to the wind, stands a splendid figure, as still as if he were the living rock. Many a keen-eyed falcon has looked out over the sea from that high watch tower, round whose base wander grey arms of ivy, gnarled and wrinkled, centuries old.

Nor do hawks alone find sanctuary here. So quiet is this lonely shore, so complete its solitude, that among these cliffs even the raven and the peregrine are safe.

In the shelter of a long line of sand-hills that centuries have heaped over the old sea-wall, there stands a solitary cottage. Its brown eaves just peer over the dyke of sand. No window looks to seaward through its massy wall. It is close above high-water mark. Often, on wild nights of winter,

Close by it runs a belt of shingle, and, beyond, there stretches away to the brown sea a wide sweep of sand, on whose wet surface the heron and the curlew leave their traces, where whole armies of sandpipers weave a maze of tiny footprints. To them this barren shore is a land of plenty. This open beach is to them the very safest of sanctuaries. No wildfowler can get within range of them unobserved. Their only foes are the herring-gull—the pirate of the sea—or the keen-eyed falcon that has his hold in yonder cliff.

Except at times of very high tides—even then only when accompanied by stormy weather—the sea never quite reaches to the sand-hills; but in summer especially, a mirage is occasionally seen on this wide beach,—a phantom sea, in whose smooth surface are reflected the jagged line of sand-hills, the church of the distant village, and the few houses scattered at far intervals along the coast.

It is a fruitful plain, whose level meadows stretch away from the old farm, fading only on the far horizon. So low it lies that, were it not for yonder mounds of sand, whose jagged fringes line the coast for miles, the high October tides would often, when a strong wind is blowing, find their way among the hamlets far inland. Many a time has the old wall given way; never, perhaps, with quite such dire results as in the great flood of 1607, when the salt water was twelve feet deep in villages five miles from the sea. Thirty hamlets were overwhelmed. Scores of unhappy villagers perished. So swift was the rush of the water that there was no chance of escape, and for many—in the words of a black-letter chap-book of the time, "their last refuge was patiently to die. Cattle were drowned in droves. Rabbits being driven out of their burroughes by the tyde, were seene to sit for safety on the backs of sheepe, as they swom up and downe, and at last were drowned with them…. Deade bodies floate hourely above water, and are continually taken uppe. It cannot yet be knowne howe manye have fell in this Tempest of God's fearful judgement."

Life here was not always quiet. The green slopes of the hill above are scarred all along with old earthworks, so defaced by plough and spade, so trampled down by men and cattle, so worn by the storms of untold centuries, that the eye can hardly trace their outlines in the smooth short sward. Not even a tradition survives of the lost inhabitants whose rude pottery and flint arrow-heads the rabbits bring up among the red earth of their burrows. Compared with this old hill fortress, the earthworks round the tower of the church yonder, the square lines of a Roman camp, the last fort on the well-guarded road down which was brought metal from the mines among the hills, are works of yesterday.

Again and again this coast was wasted by the Danes, who plundered not the hamlets by the shore alone, but villages twenty miles from the sea. Victory was not always with the invaders. Athelney is not far distant. Ethandune was on that low line of hills to the southward. And in the very year of that crowning victory, a few miles farther down, "the brother of Hingwar and Halfdene came with twenty-three ships … and he was there slain, and with him eight hundred and forty of his army, and there was taken the war-flag which they called the Raven." By the river that loiters seaward under the blue hills across the bay, whose broad mouth shines like silver in the sun, still stands the green mound of Hubbalowe, which the vikings piled over the ashes of the dead sea-rover. On every hill-top in the West Country

Each point of vantage on the hills has its time-worn lines of old entrenchments. There is hardly a lofty crest but has had its cluster of green grave mounds. But of the builders there remains little but the shapes of their ruined strongholds, their rude pottery, and still ruder weapons, from which to build up our dim conjectures of what manner of men they were who held these hill tops against the arms of Claudius and Vespasian. Even of the legionaries who forced their way thus far into the West, our knowledge has been gained by fragments. It is by accident that we have obtained our most vivid glimpses of their arts, their arms, their way of life. Massive ingots of lead have from time to time been found in the fields or along the line of one or other of the old military roads, whose stamps showed clearly how soon, after the landing of Claudius, the conquerors took possession of the mining country.

Again, when the plough struck on a stone coffin in a field remote from any sign of human occupation; and when further search revealed the ruins of a Roman villa, with beautiful pavements still undisturbed, it was possible to guess, from the lettering of the coins which were strewn among broken amphorÆ and scraps of Samian, the very year in which the house was last inhabited. Many a hoard of silver pieces has been found among these hills, buried doubtless in some "dark hour of doubt and dread," to wait for better times that never came. Many a time the labourer's spade has clashed on a rusted spear-head, a broken urn, a handful of denarii. At times even on

Relics like these—a flint arrowhead, a fragment of pottery, a handful of denarii, a camp, a tumulus—eke out the scanty records of the time, the pages of Asser, the meagre outlines of the Saxon chronicle.

Hardly a point in all the landscape but is linked with some stirring memory. It was on the little island lying off the point here that Githa found refuge after Hastings. Two years later all this shore was ravaged by the sons of Harold; and in the Domesday record, made eighteen years afterwards, we still can trace their handiwork in the lessened values of villages they had plundered. Over and over again after the brief sketch of a hamlet, its list of boors and villeins, its corn and grass land, its mill, its fishpond—perhaps even its patch of vineyard—follow such words as these: "it was worth 100s., now only 60"; or "it was worth four pounds, now only 40 shillings."

In the Armada days—for half a century, indeed, before the sailing of "that great fleet invincible"—there stood, on the high ground across the river, according to a quaint map of the period, "The Coste of England uppon Seuerne," a tower, in which a gun was mounted, as a defence against invasion. Not a stone remains of the tower which in King Harry's time guarded the little port. But all this coast was armed and ready, years before the sailing of the Armada, watching for the red glow on Dawnsboro' that should call up the bold yeomen of the moors to face the "Inquisition dogs, and the devildoms of Spain."

"The trewthe is," wrote the Muster-Master, in his report to the Government—"after having vewed and trayned the nombers bothe of foote and horse twyce since my coming into this countie—the trewthe is, it is a most gallaunte contrey for the men, armor, and rediness." The authorities were constantly furnished with "Certyffycathes," showing the numbers of duly qualified pikemen and archers. Again and again were the justices urged to keep everything in readiness, since "the wings of man's life are plumed with the feathers of death"; and to train their men to meet any emergency, because "great dilatory wants are found upon all sudden hurly-burlies." Early Orders in Council declared that any able-bodied man between seventeen and fifty-nine who should be found to "lacke a bowe and fower arrowes" was to be fined.

Later, in Elizabeth's reign, more attention was paid to the use of firearms, and most minute instructions were issued from headquarters as to the training of marksmen. The musket was to be fired at first with priming only, then with half a charge, and finally, when the men were ready for it, the full amount of powder was to be used. This was with an eye to the right training of men who, "by reason of the churlishness of their pieces, and not being made acquainted therewith by degrees, are ever after so discouraged as either they wincke or pull their heades from the piece, whereby they take no perfect level, but shoot at random, and so never prove good shottes."

Among the seaweed on the bank of shingle by the cottage all kinds of strange things are found—palm wood, long bamboos, seeds from the West Indies, sabots, children's toys. Once even a clock was washed up on the beach. A few months since the sands were strewn with parts of carriages from the wreck of a vessel that was carrying railway plant to South America. As you stand in the little garden, whose broad edges are none too good protection for it against the wind, you will notice that everything about the place has a touch of this sombre local colouring. Every piece of woodwork is part of a wreck. There is not a hinge or a bolt, hardly a nail even that did not come out of some ship's fittings. The posts on which the garden gate is hung are pieces of a mast. The gate itself is made of planks that have been picked up on the sand. Mahogany panels from the saloon of some steamship have been worked into the walling of the garden shed. No coal is ever needed here. A little peat is all that is wanted. The sea brings an endless store of firewood almost to the door.

Too often, alas! the ebbing tide leaves yet sadder jetsam on the shore—white, still figures, lying face down on the yellow sand; to be lifted reverently, perhaps, but yet by stranger hands, and committed with brief rites to the corner of the ancient burial-ground on the headland yonder, where "the little grey church on the windy hill" stands among the green graves of centuries, roofless, dismantled, and forlorn.