On most mornings in August the more careful of us will go about thrusting greasy paper-scraps out of sight under bushes, flicking the incongruous yellow of banana-peel into obscure corners, lamenting stripped boughs, and marvelling at nosegays thrown heedlessly away, as if the joy of them had lain in the mere plucking. But all the strange folk that use the village for their pleasuring at this time, do not leave these unlovely tokens behind them. Only yesterday, as I sat on the edge of the old worked-out, riverside chalk-pit here—whence you have a view north and south of the glittering water for miles—there came a new sound in the air, and I must throw aside my sheaf of galley-proofs to listen. The sound came from the river, and was still afar off. Many voices were joined in singing one of the old catch-songs, which go round a circle of three or four phrases, and to which there is never an end until you make an end of its beginning in slow time. The sweet medley grew louder and clearer, and presently there was united to it the rhythmic plash of oars. A great tarry old sea-boat came round the water’s bend, holding a party of a dozen or so. At last the labouring craft and the music came to a halt together, and the singers clambered ashore. I should have forgotten all about them now, for they soon passed out of sight amid the waterside foliage. But as I was coming homeward up the village street, I heard the voices again; and there, under the Seven Sisters on the green, the little company were standing together, singing apparently for their own solace and delight. It was a strange thing, here in unemotional England, and many of the village folk had been drawn wonderingly to their doors. Yet the singers did not seem to remark this, nor to regard their action as anything out of the common. For, the song finished, they broke into several parties and sauntered on, talking quietly amongst themselves as if to make music were part of the daily conversation of their lives. All that afternoon, from the quiet of my garden, I heard the voices at intervals, and from different points about the village, near and far. Once I saw the party right on the top of Windle Hill, strolling about in twos and threes, looking like foraging crows on the heights. After a while I saw them get together in a little circle; and then, right at the ear’s-tip, I could just catch the higher notes of their singing—a strange wild song, much like the song of the larks that must be contending with them up there against the blue sky.