I admired her "fierce volubility"; but that sudden softening at the end about the blackbird's beautiful voice, and that memory of her distant childhood, and her wish, strange in these weary days, to have her hard life to live over again, came as a surprise to me. {304} [Sidenote: Migration of swallows] In days like these, so bright and peaceful, one thinks with a feeling of wonder that many of our familiar birds are daily and nightly slipping away, decreasing gradually in numbers, so that we scarcely miss them. By the middle of September the fly-catchers and several of the warblers, all but a few laggards, have left us. Even the swallows begin to leave us before that date. On the 8th many birds were congregated at a point on the river a little above the village, and on the 10th a considerable migration took place. Near the end of a fine day a big cloud came up from the north-west, and beneath it, at a good height, the birds were seen flying down the valley in a westerly direction. I went out and watched them for half an hour, standing on the little wooden bridge that spans the stream. They went by in flocks of about eighty to a couple of hundred birds, flock succeeding flock at intervals of three or four minutes. By the time the sun set the entire sky was covered by the black cloud, and there was a thick gloom on the earth; it was then some eight or ten minutes after the last flock, flying high, had passed twittering on its way that a rush of birds came by, flying low, about on a level with my head as I stood leaning on the handrail of the bridge. I strained my eyes in vain to make out what they were--swallows or martins--as in rapid succession, and in twos and threes, they came before me, seen vaguely as dim spots, and no sooner seen than gone, shooting past my head with amazing velocity and a rushing sound, fanning my face with {305} the wind they created, and some of them touching me with their wing-tips.