Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/232

 though we had made an early beginning. As the time remaining was short, after a glance at our map, we determined to drive on to Bourn, a twelve-mile stage, and to remain there the night.

Since mid-day the sky had clouded over, whilst the barometer had dropped considerably; the weather looked gray and gloomy, and the wind blew gustily from the west. "You'll have a storm," prophesied the ostler, "and it's a wild, exposed road on to Bourn, right across the marshes, and there's no shelter on the way." We smilingly thanked the ostler for his information and his solicitude for our welfare, but all the same proceeded on our stage, jokingly reminding him that we were composed of "neither sugar nor salt." So with this encouraging "set-off" we parted, and soon found ourselves once more in the wide Fenland, with which our road was on a level, neither above nor below, as generally prevails in the district. Passing by a gray, stone-built, and picturesque old home, some short distance off in the flat fields, and leaving behind the last traces of Spalding in the shape of roadside villas and prim cottages, we entered upon a lonesome stretch of country, dark and dank and dreary, yet fascinating because so dreary, so foreign-looking, and so eerie!

Overhead, without a break, stretched the louring, dun-coloured sky; the low-lying landscape around, as though in sympathy therewith, was all of dull greens and grays, varied by long wide dykes and sedgy pools of a dismal leaden hue. The wild wind blew chilly and fitfully, and made a melancholy sighing sort of sound as it swept over the rank