In spite of discontents I might have remained to this day by the Otter, in the daily and hourly expectation of seeing some new and wonderful thing in Nature in that place where a crimson-eyed carrion-crow had been revealed to me, had not a storm of thunder and rain broken over the country to shake me out of a growing disinclination to move. We are, body and mind, very responsive to atmospheric changes; for every storm in Nature there is a storm in us--a change physical and mental. We make our own conditions, it is true, and these react and have a deadening effect on us in the long run, but we are never wholly deadened by them--if we be not indeed dead, if the life we live can be called life. We are told that there are rainless zones on the earth and regions of everlasting summer: it is hard to believe that the dwellers in such places can ever think a new thought or do a new thing. The morning rain did not last very long, and before it had quite ceased I took up my knapsack and set off towards the sea, determined on this occasion to make my escape. Three or four miles from Ottery St. Mary I overtook a cowman driving nine milch cows along a deep lane and inquired my way of him. He gave me many and minute directions, after which we got into conversation, and I walked some distance with him. The cows he was driving were all pure Devons, perfect beauties in their bright red coats in that greenest place where every rain-wet leaf sparkled in the new sunlight. Naturally we talked about the cows, and I soon found that they were his own and the pride and joy of his life. We walked leisurely, and as the animals went on, first one, then another would stay for a mouthful of grass, or to pull down half a yard of green drapery from the hedge. It was so lavishly decorated that the damage they did to it was not noticeable. By and by we went on ahead of the cows, then, if one stayed too long or strayed into some inviting side-lane, he would turn and utter a long, soft call, whereupon the straggler would leave her browsing and hasten after the others.