As I wandered along, between these great zones of sound and silence, the air seemed to grow hotter and more oppressive with every moment. There was something uncanny in the stillness of all around me. The green sprays in the tops of the highest elms lay against the blue sky sharp and clear, as though enamelled upon it. Not a bird sang in the woodland. Save for the deep throbbing melody from the sainfoin, all the world lay dumb and stupefied under the noontide glare. And then, chancing to turn and look southward, I saw the cause of it. A storm was coming up. Close down on the horizon lay a bank of cloud like a solid billow of ink. It was driving up at incredible speed. Though not a leaf or grass blade stirred around me, the cloud seemed tossed and torn in a whirlwind’s grip. Every moment it lifted higher towards the sun, changing its shape incessantly, black fold upon fold rolling together, colliding, giving place to others blacker still. And flying in advance of all this, borne by a still swifter air-current, were long sombre streamers of cloud rent into every conceivable shape of torn and tattered rags. And now, as the dense cloud-pack got up, the brilliant light was blotted out at a stroke, and this startling thing happened. Every bee, apparently, at work in the vast field of sainfoin, spread her wings at the ominous signal, and raced for home. They swept over my head in numbers that literally darkened the sky. Again, literally, the sound of their going was like a continuous deep syren-note, striking point-blank in the ear. For a minute at most it endured, and then died away almost as suddenly as it came. A bleak ghostly light paled on everything around me. Little cat’s paws of wind flung through the torpid air. Afar the harsh voice of the oncoming tempest sounded. Slow hot gouts of water began to fall, and every moment the inky pall of cloud lit up with an internal fire. At first, as I made off homeward in the track of the vanished bee-army, I tried to emulate their speed. But the torrent came surging and crying up in my rear, and in a dozen yards I was waterlogged. Thereafter, going leisurely, I came at last into the village, and so to the house. And here, in spite of the deluge, I must stop and look on at more wonders. It seemed almost impossible for any bird to sustain itself on wings under such a cataract. But there above me the martins were at their old incessant gambols, circling and darting about, hither and thither, high and low, in a whirling madcap crew; and higher still, right in the throat of the tempest, I could make out the swifts, hundreds strong, weaving their old mazy pattern on the sky, as though in the pearl and opal dusk of a summer’s evening. THE TEA-GARDEN AUGUST I