"When Bredon Hill puts on his cap Ye men of the vale beware of that" is a well-known proverb referring to the dark curtain of rain clouds obscuring the top, which is generally followed by heavy rain and floods in the Avon meadows and those of all the little streams which join that river. The same purple curtain can be seen on the Cotswolds above Broadway, and is likewise the forerunner of floods in the Vale: "When you see the rain on the hills You'll shortly find it down by the mills." There is, too, the beautiful blue hazy distance one sees in very fine weather, which gives a feeling of mystery and remoteness and unexplored possibilities. I lately read somewhere of a man who had passed his life without leaving his native village, though he had often looked far away into the blue distance, and longed to start upon a journey of discovery; for its invitation seemed an assurance that in such beauty there must be something better than he had ever experienced in his own home. There came a day when the appeal was so insistent that he braced himself to the effort, and after many weary miles reached the place of his dreams, only to find that the blue distance had disappeared. Meeting a passer-by he told him of his journey and its object, and of his disappointment, "Look behind you," was the reply. He looked, and behold! over the very spot he had left in the morning--over his own home--the blue haze hung, as a veil of beauty, with its exquisite promise. There is a moral and there is comfort in this tale for him who fancies that he is the victim of circumstances and surroundings. That is the man who, as my bailiff used to say in harvest, has always got a heavier cut of wheat than his neighbour in the same field, and is always finding himself "at the wrong job." CHAPTER XX. CHANGING COURSE OF STREAMS--DEWPONDS--A WET HARVEST--WEATHER PHENOMENA--WILL-O'-THE-WISP--VARIOUS. "There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O Earth, what changes hast thou seen!" --_In Memoriam_. "With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow. "I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever." _The Brook_.