It was a wild and gusty day early in April; a wet wind from the south-east drove the waves into a little bay, where the sea had long ago forced an opening in the great chalk rampart of the coast. The downs rose steeply above this opening, their short sweet grass freshened by rain and wind; down below in the hollow a little stream, clear as every chalk-stream is, trickled through the long grass, still brown with the sun of last summer, and nestled here and there under a fringe of dwarf willows or alders. As it reached the shore, which was a huge bank of rounded flints from the white cliff, the brook spread itself out for a little space on a stony bed, and played with a few green weeds that had fastened themselves upon the larger pebbles, then crept quietly into the flinty bank, and vanished utterly before it lost itself finally in the sea-waves. Early in the morning of that April day you might have seen a tiny bird fly in from the sea, and settle, more dead than alive, upon the top of the bank. Here the strong wind, coming now from behind it, blew up its feathers and made it so uncomfortable that in a minute or two it fluttered down the stones to the wider bit of stream beyond; and then again, seeing still better shelter a little further on, it struggled along the brook till it reached the first little group of fringing willows, and there, close to the water, in a little hollow under the bank, where the willow-roots were thick and close, and where a turn in the brook gave respite from the gusts and rain, it felt itself safe and tolerably warm, began to preen its feathers, and at last put its head under its little brown wing and slept. It was a willow-warbler; olive-brown on head, back, and tail, but with just a tinge of yellow too; whitish-gray on throat and breast, and with a faint light stripe over the bright hazel eyes. It was very small, not more than five inches from point of beak to end of tail; but it had that night crossed the sea from France, and in the last few days it had made a journey of some thousand miles from the north of Africa where it had passed the winter. It had not travelled alone; it had left the coast of Normandy with a company of tired friends; but in the night the wind rose howling in the south-east and scattered the weary but hopeful little band. Many a time in that trying night it would have sunk upon the waves if the thought had not ruled its soul of the cool moist and of varied sunshine and showers, where it had first learned to fly, where the next summer it had learnt to use its voice and to woo a mate, and had brought up its young without disaster. Driven northward by the burning heat of the south, which had dried up the streams, and killed the juicy insects it loved, it had made its way steadily with its comrades to the green moist land of its birth, and its heart was full of ardent hope for another long summer of love and song and happiness.