The last I saw of this mysterious company was at sunset, from my perch over the chalk-pit again. They had already embarked when I arrived, and had got their little ship well under way. The oars were dipping steadily to the same old catch-song that had brought them hither: there was still a faint throbbing echo of ‘White Sand and Grey Sand’ upon the air long after the sun had plunged, and the pale half-moon was beginning to enter a timid silver protest against the lingering crimson in the sky. II Near upon half a century I have lived in the world, and cannot yet say of the wind whether I hate it or love it most. It is a dilemma that comes only to the dweller in the country, for in a town no sane man can be in two minds on the matter. With a careering, mephitic dust choking up all organs of perception, and the risk of being cloven to the chine by a roof slate or lassoed by a loose electric wire, no one can think of wind, hot or cold, without heartily wishing it gone. But in the country, though for my old enemy, the northeast wind, I have nothing but fear and detestation at all seasons, warm gales, whether in winter or summer, come as often in friendly as in inimical guise. Like certain of the Hindu gods, the wind must be content to be treated according to the outcome of its activities, and receive laudation or revilement as this prove fair or foul. All through to-day the south-west wind has been volleying up the combe, and everywhere in the village there has been a hubbub of slamming doors and rattling casements, and the flack and clutter of linen drying on the garden lines. People fought their way step by step down the hill against the wind, and tripped lightly up it, the oldest and feeblest forced into a smart jog-trot. Aprons were blown over faces, and hats snatched off at corners. The trees overshadowing the village have been lashing together, and roaring out a deep continuous song. The three thatchers on the inn sign, each with a gilded hod of straw, have been flashing signals up to my window every time the sun broke through the flying storm-wrack; and a hundred times in the long day some riding witch of a rain-cloud has tried to drench us, but each time the south-west gale has seized it by the tattered skirts and chevied it away over the hills before it could shed a dozen drops. But it has been a good wind all through, and fine heartening weather; and I have been glad to be abroad in it whenever I could spare or steal an hour. Said the old vicar, as we climbed up Windle Hill together this morning, his long white beard flowing out before him as he lay back on the blast: ‘I know what you would have done, if I had let you choose the way. You would have struck deep into the woods, like the butterflies, and missed all the healthy buffeting of it. But there is only one place for a man to-day, and that is on the open Down. It never pays in the long-run in life to study how to keep out of the way of hard knocks.’