nd the crush. Flashes of brilliant lightning seemed
to sweep down the narrow street, which ran like a brook with the
storm-water; the thunder seemed to descend and shake the solid walls.
'It's rather hard on the professor,' said one farmer to another. 'What
would science do in a thunderstorm?' He had hardly spoken when the hail
suddenly came down, and the round white globules, rebounding from the
pavement, rolled in at the open door. Each paused as he lifted his glass
and thought of the harvest. As for Hodge, who was reaping, he had to take
shelter how he might in the open fields. Boom! flash! boom!--splash and
hiss, as the hail rushed along the narrow street.

CHAPTER II

LEAVING HIS FARM

A large white poster, fresh and glaring, is pasted on the wall of a barn
that stands beside a narrow country lane. So plain an advertisement,
without any colour or attempt at 'display,' would be passed unnoticed
among the endless devices on a town hoarding. There nothing can be hoped
to be looked at unless novel and strange, or even incomprehensible. But
here the oblong piece of black and white contrasts sufficiently in itself
with red brick and dull brown wooden framing, with tall shadowy elms, and
the glint of sunshine on the streamlet that flows with a ceaseless murmur
across the hollow of the lane. Every man that comes along stays to read
it.

The dealer in his trap--his name painted in white letters on the
shaft--pulls up his quick pony, and sits askew on his seat to read. He has
probably seen it before in the bar of the wayside inn, roughly hung on a
nail, and swaying to and fro with the draught along the passage. He may
have seen it, too, on the handing-post at the lonely cross-roads, stuck on
in such a manner that, in order to peruse it, it is necessary to walk
round the post. The same formal announcement appears also in the local
weekly papers--there are at least two now in the smallest place--and he
has read it there. Yet he pauses to glance at it again, for the country
mind requires reiteration before it can thoroughly grasp and realise the
simplest fact. The poster must be read and re-read, and the printer's name
observed and commented on, or, if handled, the thickness of the paper felt
between thumb and finger. After a month or two of this process people at
last begin to accept it as a reality, like cattle or trees--something
substantial, and not mere words.

The carter, with his waggon, if he be an el