stone-houses which at once transfer our can't expect to have all good 'uns, not even imaginative lady traveller into the wilds of along of my nuts, you can't. And if you Yorkshire; but here, without further pre- gets a crowd o' people, there's some good amble in the way of suburbs, we are run and some bad, and likewise with the alongside a platform, and here is Hun-weather 'tis the same, good days and stanton. bad 'uns." My word! how the wind whistles in the Out of the mixture of good and evil, rigging of our little crowd! How the indicated by the philosophical nut-seller, skirts flap and crack in the breeze! There there certainly comes forth a good dinner. is a hillside covered with houses, built of They have prime beef and mutton down the same warm-coloured unhewn stone-a here. But the tradition of the Norfolk comfortable settlement enough, but with dumpling seems to have faded out of no particular comforts to offer to us excur- existence. The more familiar Yorkshire sionists. A prim-looking iron pier stretches seems to have crowded it out of existence; over the sands. Wet are the sands, the anyhow at public tables, though, no doubt, boulders wet, too, and slippery, the terraces it still survives in the domestic cuisine. swept by the wind. Harry curls up, and But fortified and refreshed, Harry is once feels like a caterpillar. What about the more disposed to enjoy himself, if he can toyshops, the articles of the beach, the get the chance. But the ministers of his little bazaars, the stalls full of nicknacks, simple pleasures are no longer here; the the toy-boats and full-rigged ships? Every gay Bohemians all are fled. A band is thing that will fly away is stowed inside, announced for Wednesday evening, but and the proprietors eye us through their that is of no use to us on a Monday. The windows with the same air of mild com- pier is something of a desert, although passion that we noticed about the retreat- the glazed enclosure at the end is a capital ing visitors. Bleak and cold gleams the refuge against the biting wind. A family white lighthouse on the cliffs. The red party are picnicking out here; the children cliffs, with their caps of white chalk, are career over the empty benches, and play swept from end to end by the searching imaginary overtures in the band-stand. A wind. There is angry, broken water beyond pair of young honeymooners are making eyes the sands. The boats at their moorings are at each other. A young fellow, in rough shipping water by bucketfuls; some have sea-going rig, watches the angry waves already sunk; and there is some excite- that are playing battledore and shuttlecock ment in watching the efforts of their pro- with his little craft that lies out at anchor prietors to retrieve such articles in the way among the surf. And then the sun breaks of sails and oars which have been left in out for a little while, and throws glorious them. "Who's for a sail?" cries Harry, gleams of light over breaking surf and wet and volunteers to be one to man the life-sands, and the broad backs of shoals and boat if she will undertake the trip. Among the white sea-horses wide sands are showing their broad backs, and, beyond, the dark coast of Lincolnshire runs out into the darker sea-line; on the horizon, a big screw steamer, three-parts out of the water, shows her huge bulk, panting and puffing out white steam, but making little head way. "And this is the Wash!" cried Harry, surveying the scene. "It's beautiful weather for it, certainly, fine drying weather, only it's trying for the clothespegs. Brings out the patent blue, though, don't it? Next time I'll do my little wash at 'ome!" Harry is bitterly sarcastic against the weather, the scenery, and everything, and lets out his feelings before a philosophical sailor man who is selling nuts, and who puts down his basket to argue the matter out. "Now, look y'ere, sir," he cries, "you sandbanks. The white lighthouse and the red and white cliffs gleam and glower in the sunshine, and the warm tints of the houses, and the vivid green of lawn and grassy slope come out in pleasant contrast. Girls are galloping their ponies over the sands, children paddle among the laughing ripples. But great battalions of clouds are on the march, and with them is the wind that whistles and howls, and the driving shower with its keen biting drops. But, as Harry observes, it is fine drying weather, and the moisture of the shower is quickly carried off by the wind. "And now, young gentleman," says the philosophic nut-seller, whom Harry has propitiated by the purchase of a pint of his wares, mostly good, but not warranted to be all good, "you'll go home, and say you've bin to Hunston; but you haven't, not yet. Hunston's about a mile and a half further along." But Harry declares that this is Hunston enough for him, and declines to explore the country further. Yet the walk to old Hunstanton, which is the real original settlement from which the sea-bathing town is an offset, is really a pleasant one; and over the brow of the hill, away from the sea, the air is quite mild and genial. The quiet country lane is warm, and sheltered with green hedgerows, where honeysuckle and bramble flourish, and wide fields opening out, and great stacks of yellow corn piled here and there. Then the village appears, which is warm and snug, too, with its red-brick cottages weathered and mellowed by the shine and storm of a few centuries. And here are gardens of the brightest and most luxuriant, still full of roses, and with a wealth of autumn flowers. Lower down a kind of ravine breaks away towards the sea, on the edge of which stands the coastguard station, with its tall flagstaff and neat, whitewashed dwellings, which all look towards the sea over a broken, hummocky shore. The place looks quite an ideal one for smuggling; but that is all over now, and the population of the village seem to be more in the way of harvesting, stack ing, and threshing, than in any seafaring business. A pleasant lot of the infant coast-guard are clambering about the low wall and the palings of the station, and a young woman is playfully threatening them with the vengeance of the authorities. A tall, paternal-looking coast-guard is on the lookout with a long telescope, and judges the weather with an impartial eye. "There is too much wind for rain," he says, "to last; but we shall have showers, no doubt." And the shower part of the prophecy is abundantly fulfilled. But the church is a refuge from wind and rain-the church that lies in a sheltered nook out of the way of all the trouble and turmoil of sea and shore. A handsome church, with a fine square tower, and generally a noble air about it. Close by the church is the Hall, the seat of the family of Le Strange, which, according to genealogists, has been there ever since the Conquest; and the chancel of the old church is full of family memorials in the way of brasses, monuments, and inscriptions. Everything now in the church looks bright and burnished; the brasses well polished, the marbles bright and glittering. The old Norman font is wreathed with white flowers, and the chancel glows with the decorations for the harvest festival. The ladies who have been at the work have just finished their labours, and look tired enough; but the result is worth their labour and pains. All the fruits and flowers of the season have been deftly arranged in glowing trophies, that cast a radiance over the dim chancel, though the clouds above are dark and lowering. Beneath a noble altar tomb in the very centre of the chancel, adorned with elaborate brasses, a whole family pedigree surrounding the central figure, lies Sir Roger L'Estrange-not the Sir Roger more or less familiar to us as the licenser of printing in the reign of Charles the Second, but his grandfather, probably. The father of our Sir Roger has a monument on the chancel floor with the punning inscription, "Hamo Extraneus Miles," an inscription probably prepared by Sir Hamo himself without any thought of humour, but considering himself indeed a stranger and pilgrim, even in his own land and among his own kinsfolk. In a satire on the licenser of the press, this Sir Hamo is described as the knight of the pulpit, and he seems to have been the author of several controversial works on the side of orthodoxy and authority in the civil and ecclesiastical contests that raged in his day. Sir Roger of the Press was his third son, a captain under Major Cartwright in the garrison at Newark, who conceived the rash plan of surprising Lynn for the King with a few bold fellows, but who was captured and barely escaped being hanged for his pains. But he is more interesting in later years under the Restoration as one of the earliest pioneers of the newspaper press. The "Public Intelligencer and News," which he started in 1663, was superseded after a time by the "London Gazette." But some years later he started another newspaper-the "Observator"—which had a more lengthened existence. Sir Roger was also a voluminous writer on many topics, but is best known to the general as the translator of Æsop's Fables. In the Rabelaisian satire upon the worthy knight, there is one passage of a little interest as referring to this particular church. "Climbing up a tree he espied, about two hundred leagues from him, the top of a steeple, which, by the cross on the top of it, he knew stood in the land of Norfolchia, not far from his father's castle." There is no cross now, and no steeple, indeed; but whether at any time the square church towers, so common in Norfolk, were ever adorned with wooden steeples, and these steeples terminated by a cross, is a question natural as contradistinguished from a for the archæologists of the county. But we have no more time to linger in this pleasant sheltered nook. The day is drawing in, and the weather is getting worse instead of better, and there is abundant demonstration, despite the coastguardsman, that it is possible to have it blow hard and rain hard at one and the same time. All things considered, it is satisfactory to gain the shelter of the station roof without a thorough drenching. As dusky darkness settles over the scene, the train for St. Pancras is made up, and it is pleasant to exchange the dripping gloom outside for the lighted carriages, cushioned and warm. Harry is in his seat in good time, but only recovers his spirits when the train is fairly on the move. There is little to be seen till the moon rises solemnly in a cloudy sky over the town of Lynn, and we agree that it was on such a night as this that the stern-faced men set out for Lynn, when Eugene Aram walked between. We have a capital run to London, and agree that, as far as the railway company is concerned, we could not have had a better finish of the season. "But you don't catch me out again," says Harry, "not beyond 'Ighgate 'Ill, till summer comes again." CURIOUS RAIN SHOWERS. supernatural phenomenon, and is caused by various substances-plants, animalcules, and minerals-infinitely small, which, gathered into the air by the wind, mingle with the rain globules in such untold quantities, as to completely hide the original colour. Some years ago there fell a shower of red rain at Bristol, which, on examination, was found to derive its colour from the seeds of ivy-berries which fell with it. Pollen showers, vulgarly called yellow or sulphur rains, are comparatively common; some are the pollen of the Scotch fir; and one extraordinary fall of this kind of rain, which took place during the night, was phosphorescent, and greatly alarmed the beholders. One afternoon, we are told by Dr. Thomson, in his "Introduction to Meteorology," the wooded part of Morayshire appeared to smoke, and, for a time, fears were entertained that the fir plantations were on fire. A smart breeze suddenly got up from the north, and above the woods there appeared to rise about fifty columns of something resembling smoke, which wreathed about like waterspouts. The atmosphere now calmed, and the mystery was solved; for what seemed smoke was, in reality, the pollen of the woods. Readers of the "Origin of Species" will readily understand the importance of this distribution of pollen in the fertilisation of the fir-trees. Showers of "manna," like that, presumably, which saved the children of Israel in the wilderness, are frequent, and consist of an esculent lichen, which, in times of famine, has done good service in the preservation of a whole people. In 1815, a lake in the south of France suddenly became a patchwork of red, violet, and grass-green, which, on examination by Klaproth, was found to have been caused by myriads of various coloured animalcules. CONTRARY to popular belief, clouds are not essential to the production of rain. Sometimes the rain may be wafted on the wind from a distance; but it may also be caused by the condensation of moisture, without its passing through the intermediate state of clouds. In the higher regions this vapour may become frozen, even without the semblance of a cloud, and descending to a warmer stratum, be again dissolved, dissipated, or precipitated. Black rain is another curious pheWe have it on the authority of Sir J. C. nomenon, which has not yet been properly Ross, that in the South Atlantic it rained and adequately explained. There fell, on on one occasion for over an hour when the the twenty-third of November, 1819, a sky was entirely free from clouds. In the remarkable black shower at Montreal, acMauritius and other parts of the southern companied by appalling thunder. The fall hemisphere, this is not a rare occurrence; had been preceded by dark and gloomy but in Europe it is, and the greatest known weather over the whole of the States and length of its duration was ten minutes at Canada, and, when Montreal itself was Constantinople. visited, the whole city became dark; the atmosphere appeared as if covered with a thick haze of a dingy orange colour, and the rain which fell had a thick and dark inky appearance, and seemed to be impregnated with some black substance resembling We find frequent mention, in old writers, of blood rain, which was supposed to fall only at rare intervals, and to portend some dire calamity. This is no other than red rain, which, with red snow, is a perfectly soot. The first visitation was made on a Sunday; on the day following, the weather became clearer; but on the Tuesday a heavy damp vapour with a black pall enveloped the whole city again, and it became necessary to light the candles and lamps in all the houses. "The appear ance," says a writer, "was awful and grand in the extreme." A little before three o'clock a slight shock of earthquake was felt, and a noise resembling the distant discharge of artillery was heard. It was now that the increasing gloom engrossed universal attention. At twenty minutes past three, when the darkness seemed to have reached its greatest depth, the whole city was instantaneously illuminated by the most vivid flash of lightning ever witnessed in Montreal, immediately followed by a peal of thunder so loud and near as to shake the strongest buildings to their foundations; and this was succeeded by other peals, and accompanied by a very heavy shower of rain of the colour above described. After four o'clock the heavens began to assume a brighter appearance, and fear gradually subsided. Showers of snow and earth have been numerous; but showers of flesh, fish, frogs, etc., of which every sailor can tell stories, are worth noticing, as being of more infrequent occurrence. The flesh was recognised as a distinct substance by Schenchzer, about the beginning of the last century, and its true animal nature was shown by Lemonnier, in 1747. It is said to have borne a greater resemblance to mucus than to gelatine or tannin; but it does not exactly agree with any of these. It is unctuous, greyish-white, and, when cold, inodorous and tasteless; it is soluble in warm water, and then resembles thin beeftea. In South America an area of country forty-three miles square was, on one occasion, found strewed with fish; and on another occasion, in England, at a considerable distance from the sea, a pasture field was found scattered over with about a bushel of small fish. Herrings fell in 1828 in Kinross-shire; and instances of other similar falls are legion. At Ham, in France, a M. Peltier, after a heavy rain had fallen, found the square before him covered with toads. "Astonished at this," he tells us, "I stretched out my hand, which was struck by many of these animals as they fell. The yard of the house was also full of them. I saw them fall on the roof of a house and rebound from thence to the pavement. They all went off by the channels which the rain formed, and were carried out of the town." There is something of an apocryphal air about the latter part of this experience; but the phenomena of flesh, fish, and fishbone showers are reasonable enough. The fish are taken up into the air in a waterspout, borne along by the currents, and dropped, it may be, some hundreds of miles away, just as dust, containing small animals and plants, is gathered up near the Amazon and dropped on some vessel passing the Madeira or the Cape de Verde Islands. Showers of hailstones of a great size are common; but perhaps the few instances which we give here are not so well known, and will therefore bear relating. In England, in 1202, hailstones fellas large as big eggs," to use the words of the old chronicler. At the end of the seventeenth century some were found measuring from eight to fourteen inches in circumference; and in Scotland, in 1269, "there rose great winds with storms of such unmeasurable hailstones, that manie towns were thrown down by their violence, and fires spread throughout the kingdom, burning up steeples with such force of fire, that the belles were in divers places melted." In the Orkney Islands, in 1878, hailstones were gathered as large as a goose's egg; and in 1822 men and animals were killed by them on the banks of the Rhine. The most extraordinary hailstone on record, however, is that said by Heyne to have descended near Seringapatam, towards the close of Tippoo Sultan's reign; it was as large as an elephant! This is a great attempt on one's credulity, and, after it, perhaps we had better come to a close. CATHERINE MAIDMENT'S BURDEN A STORY IN TWELVE CHAPTERS. BY MARGARET MOULE. CHAPTER VI. MRS. ARBUTHNOT, having finished her after-dinner nap, was coming slowly down the stairs at the Castle on the following day. She was wondering what she could do with herself during the hour that lay between her and tea-time. Experience had taught her that time spent in looking for her daughter was likely to be time wasted. Grace was never to be found when she was wanted, and, from the fact that she had, at lunch-time, mentioned no definite plans for the afternoon, her mother inferred that they were, probably, privately well matured. She was not afraid for Grace, to-day. She thought the sobering effect of yesterday's accident would keep her from any very daring action in the immediate future, and Captain Carnforth being out for the day, on a long expedition, in company with Mr. Dare, her mind was completely at rest, and all the more at leisure to try and devise occupation for herself. The other two guests-Mrs. Kenyon and Miss Neville had retired, after luncheon, to the drawing room, each with a book. Mrs. Arbuthnot would, however, have ruthlessly interrupted their literary pursuits if she had not felt considerably disinclined for conversation with Mrs. Kenyon or chatter from Miss Neville. So she refrained from approaching the drawing-room, and stood looking around her in the hall in a somewhat doubtful and depressed frame of mind. As she did so the outlook from the front door caught her eyes, and, with a sudden determination that she would take a little fresh air, Mrs. Arbuthnot took up a sunshade that she had laid in the hall on returning that morning from a drive, and went out alone into the grounds. She had not gone more than a hundred yards after leaving the gardens when the sound of quick steps behind her made her start, and Mr. Stewart-Carr came up to her. He had been unavoidably absent all the morning on business connected with a political meeting, in which he was expected to take a prominent part, in the small county town near Moreford; and none of his guests had seen him since breakfast-time. "My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot," he said, as he reached her, "are you making a lonely tour of my grounds? I am very sorry not to have been at hand sooner; but I was detained very much longer than I expected. Now I am on the spot may I accompany you? I can point out accurately all their defects and all their attractions," he ended, laughingly. Mrs. Arbuthnot saw, in this unlookedfor appearance of Mr. Stewart-Carr, a most happy dispensation of Fate. The hour before tea would now no longer be tedious; and with a quick turn of thought, that was instinctively if unconsciously diplo matic, she decided that this hour might be well used by her to help forward what she mentally called "Grace's interests": in plain words, her own cherished scheme of marrying Grace to Mr. Stewart Carr. So she welcomed him very graciously, and acceded to his proposal still more graciously. "Don't overtax an old woman's walking powers, that is all I ask," she said, smiling; "you young men are so alarmingly athletic.". He answered her by some complimentary and deprecatory words, and proposed to her that they should take their way towards a higher part of the park, which commanded a good view of the whole; and they set out across the shady slopes together. "Whereabouts was it that dear Grace fell yesterday?" said Mrs. Arbuthnot, after a short pause, during which she had been carefully considering how to introduce the subject of Grace most adroitly and most quickly; and had come to the conclusion that direct methods, after all, were the most simple and satisfactory. "Oh, nowhere near here," he answered. "On quite the other side of the park. It was near the White House-the house you catch sight of from the drive." Then, turning round to her, "I do hope," he went on, "that Miss Arbuthnot is not feeling any bad effects this afternoon. I hope she is still as much recovered as she felt this morning. "Oh, yes, thank you," Mrs. Arbuthnot said, with an ease as complete as her agitation of the day before. She is quite well again; the shock has entirely passed away. But," she added, more gravely, "it might not have been so. Dear Grace is so terribly reckless; I trust this may be really a serious warning to her." "I blame myself greatly," Mr. StewartCarr went on, "for having such a horse as Queen Bess in my stables. I have meant to part with her for months; but you know how one puts off these things, and I never wrote or gave the order. I heartily wish I had. One has no right to keep dangerous animals." "Indeed, Mr. Stewart-Carr, it is not you who should blame yourself. What more could you do than warn Grace? Indeed, if I remember, you refused to let her mount the horse." "Yes; I refused," he said, with a smile. "Grace has, I hope, told you that she is quite aware of her recklessness and |