How the dew-pond came to be invented has often been the subject of wondering speculation. No doubt there have been dew-pond makers for untold centuries back, but at one time, however far distant, a first discovery of the principle underlying the thing must have been made. Probably the dew-pond, in some form or other, had its origin in those remote times when all the high-lying chalk-lands of southern England were overrun by a dense population. But then, as now, the region must have been waterless; and the people, living there for security’s sake, must, nevertheless, have been constrained to provide themselves with this first daily necessity of all life. We read of the manna given in the Wilderness, and the water struck from the Rock. These were miracles worked, as miracles ever are, for children: they were grown men, evidently, in mind and heart, to whom the dew-pond was given. For though the thing, in essence, was set to shine about their feet wherever men trod, so that none could forbear seeing, its adaptation to human need was left to man’s own labour and thoughtful ingenuity. To-day, as in those far-off ages, the dwarf plume-thistle studs the sward of the Downs, each circle of thick, fleshy leaves, matted together and centrally depressed, forming a perfect little dew-pond, that retains its garnered moisture long after all other vegetation has grown dry in the heat of the mounting sun. Even if there were no such thing as a dew-pond on all the Downs to-day, and every flock must perforce be driven miles, perhaps, down into the valley to be watered, it is inconceivable that no one of prime intelligence, wandering the hills alive to the need of the thirsty thousands around him, would mark the natural reservoirs of the thistles, reason out the principles they embodied, and straightway set brain and hand to work on the first dew-pond—using perchance, in earliest experiment, the actual thistle-leaves for the indispensable heat-retarding layer.
I had often talked the matter over with George Artlett, and now we drifted into the old subject. But he was never to be cajoled out of his belief in the miraculous nature of the affair.
‘Him as sent th’ fire down to th’ could altar,’ he said, his long arm going up to heaven, and his voice taking on that deep, vibratory chime so familiar to Sunday loiterers in Stavisham marketplace, ‘He knaws how to send watter to faith an’ a dry pan. Ay! but I ha’ seed it comin’, many’s the time. An’ th’ first time, I ’lowed as ’twur High Barn ricks burnin’. We was goin’ hoame to fold, and there afore me, right agen th’ red night-sky, I seed a gurt topplin’ cloud o’ summut as looked like smoke ahent th’ hill. Sez I, ’tis High Barn ricks afire! But it warn’t. It wur jest Gorramighty gatherin’ together His dew from the fower winds o’ heaven, an’ pourin’ it into Maast’ Coles’s pond.’
III
One afternoon, when the month was all but at its end, I came home through the riverside meadows. The sun had just dipped below the misty earth-line. Before me, in the east, the darkness was spreading up the sky, and the larger stars already shone with something of their nightly lustre. But behind me it was still day. From the horizon upward, and far overhead, the sky was a pale, luminous turquoise, overflecked with cloud of fiery amber—the two colours a perfect harmony of cold and heat. As I trod the narrow field-path, facing the dusk, with all that glorious enmity reconciled at my back, I became aware of a mysterious sound somewhere in the chain of tree-girt meadows on ahead. A missel-thrush had been singing hard by, but now his clarion had ceased, and this other far-away note forced me suddenly out of my musing. It was not a single song, but a deep, continuous outpouring, a medley of music like the splashing and tumbling of mountain brooks. With every step forward it grew in volume. At last, in a belt of elm-trees that bordered one of the farthest fields, I came upon the cause of it; and though I had many times seen vast congregations of starlings, I had never before encountered so huge a company as now met my gaze.
The trees stretched across the entire field, and every twig on every branch had its perching songster, the combined effect being as though the trees had suddenly shot out a magic foliage, coal-black against the deepening blue of the sky, heavy and thick as leaves in June. Now the mountain brooks had swollen to Niagaras. The hubbub was literally deafening. I shouted my loudest, hoping to set the gargantuan host to flight, but I could scarce hear my own voice. For a full ten minutes I stood in that great flood-tide of melody, and all the time fresh detachments of birds were continually arriving to swell the multitude, and add their voices to the chorus. At length I saw two birds break away from the mass, and fly straight off side by side. Immediately the tumult ceased, and there followed a sound like the long, rumbling roll of thunder. The whole concourse had taken wing together, the tree-tops, released from their weight, lashing back as though struck by a flaw of wind. Now the army swept over my head, darkening the sky as it went. The thunderous sound grew less and less as the flock made for the distant woods. A moment more, and an uncanny silence had fallen on everything. Then, half a mile away in the misty dark, I heard the rich, wild voice peal out again, where the starling host had taken up their quarters for the night.
Thus it happened every evening for a week after, when they passed on out of the district and I saw them no more. Probably no single stretch of country could support such incredible numbers for more than a few days together, and they must be for ever trekking onward, leaving behind them a famine-stricken land, and making life all the harder for our own native birds. For there is little doubt that these vast hordes of starlings that sweep the country-side in winter, are foreigners in the main.
FEBRUARY
I
From where my old house stands, behind its double row of lindens at the top of the green, you can see well-nigh all that is happening in Windlecombe. Sitting at the writing-table in the great bay-window, you get an uninterrupted view down the length of the village street. From the windows right and left—through a trellis of bare branches in winter, and, in summer, through gaps in the greenery—you overlook the side-alleys where dwell the less profoundly respectable, the more free-and-easy, of Windlecombe folk. And in the rear, beyond my garden and little orchard, there is the farm—rickyard and barn and dwelling-house all crowded together on the green hill-side bestrewn with grazing cattle, cocks and hens innumerable, all of the snow-white breed, gobbling turkeys, and guinea-fowl that cry ‘Come back, come back!’ every waking moment of their lives.