The reservoirs by Molesey stretch far back from the river. Nearer the river the birds find them more hospitable. I remember a day in October when I stood watching the martins making one of their last halts on the way south over the reservoirs on the river bank at Surbiton. It was a pouring wet afternoon, there was a high wind, and the rain drove bubbles in the ruffled water and half blotted the greens and greys of blown willows and the russet of thorn berries on the far side of the river. A short trolley line ran down a stone pier from beside the road to the edge of the water, where a barge with a bright brown sail waited; the smoke from a clinker fire built in a pierced bucket swept fitfully about the pier; grimy men loaded a car on the trolley line. Over the grey-blue water hundreds of house-martins dipped and darted and chattered; my umbrella blew inside out, a few scared birds near me tossed up into the sky and fell down again, joining the hundreds circling and curtseying in the wind and the rain. The road from Molesey runs west to Walton-on-Thames, where you strike the river high enough to find it running through something like real country. Walton has an interesting old manor house and a Norman church a good deal spoiled by restorers. In the vestry, preserved in a cabinet made out of an old beam from the belfry, is a relic of days when women talked too much--a scold's or gossip's bridle. It is a sort of cage shaped to fit the head and made of steel, which time has rusted and blackened. A kind of bit is arranged to go into the scold's mouth and hold her tongue, and according to those who have been voluntarily bridled--nobody can remember a scold in Walton--it answers its purpose admirably. When the bit is in and the bridle properly padlocked the most vixenish can only utter inarticulate murmurs. [Illustration: _Walton Church._]