Immediately Afterwards Down Came A North Wind And Put
Nature Under Its Thumb For Two Months; The Drone-Fly Hid Himself, The
Bees Went Home, Everything Became Shrivelled, Dry, Inhuman.
The local
direction of the wind might vary, but it was still the same polar
draught, the blood-sucker; for, like a vampire, it sucks the very blood
and moisture out of delicate human life, just as it dries up the sap in
the branch.
While this lasted there were no notes to make, the changes
were slower than the hour hand of a clock; still it was interesting to
see the tree-climber come every morning at eleven o'clock to the
cobble-stone wall and ascend it exactly as he ascends trees, peering into
chinks among the moss and the pennywort. He seemed almost as fond of
these walls as of his tree trunks. He came regularly at eleven and again
at three in the afternoon, and a barn owl went by with a screech every
evening a little after eight. The starlings told the time of the year as
accurately as the best chronometer at Whitehall. When I saw the last
chimney swallow, November 30, they went by to their sleeping-trees about
three o'clock in the afternoon - a long night, a short day for them. So
they continued till in January the day had grown thirty minutes longer,
when they went to roost so much the later; in February, four o'clock; in
March, by degrees their time for passing by the window - en route - drew on
to five o'clock.
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