I would rather have been Alice Ayres,1 and have died as she died, than have been famous as the author of the Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, or Hamlet. She is now forgotten and sleeps in an obscure grave in some London cemetery. No! there will be nothing more. I have said all I had to

say.

1 On the 24th April 1885 a fire broke out in an oilmonger's house in the Borough. The inmates were the oilmonger, his wife, four children, and Alice, the servant-ofall-work. She came to the window as soon as the alarm was raised and shouted for help. Before the fire brigade arrived the whole building was in flames. The people in the street called to her to jump and held out clothes to break her fall, but she went back and presently reappeared dragging a feather bed with her, which she pushed out. It was instantly extended below, and Alice fetched one of the children and threw it most carefully down. It was saved, and two other children also were saved by her in the same way. By this time it was evident that the suffocating fumes were beginning to affect her, for her aim with the last two was not steady. The crowd implored her to leap, but it was too late. She could not make a proper spring and fell on the ground. Five minutes afterwards the engines and fire-escape appeared. She was picked up and died in Guy's Hospital. I begged her portrait from her brother. It is not remarkable. That, perhaps, is the best thing that can be said about it. It is a pleasant, brave face-a face that you might see a dozen times on a Sunday afternoon. -M. R.

CLEARING-UP AFTER A STORM

IN JANUARY

A WESTERLY storm of great strength had been blowing all day, shaking the walls of the house and making us fear for the chimneys. About four o'clock, although the wind continued very high, the clouds broke, and moved in a slow, majestic procession obliquely from the north-west to the southeast. Here and there small apertures revealed the undimmed heaven behind. Immense, rounded projections reared themselves from the main body, and flying, ragged fragments, apparently at a lower level, fled beside and before them. These fragments of lesser density showed innumerable tints of bluish grey from the darkest up to one which differed but little from the pure sky-blue surrounding them. Just after the sun set a rosy flush of light spread almost instantaneously up to the zenith and in an instant had gone. Low down in the west was a long, broadish bar

150 AFTER A STORM IN JANUARY

of orange light, crossed by the black pines. on the hill half a mile away. Their stems and the outline of each piece of foliage were as distinct as if they were but a hundred yards distant. Half the length of the field in front of me lay a small pool full to its grassy margin. It reflected with such singular fidelity the light and colour above it that it seemed itself to be an original source of light and colour. Of all the sights to be seen in this part of the world none are more strangely and suggestively beautiful than the little patches of rain or spring water in the twilight on the moorland or meadows. Presently the wind rose again, and a rain-squall followed. It passed, and the stars began to come out, and Orion showed himself above the eastern woods. He seemed as if he were marching through the moonlit scud which drove against him. How urgent all the business of this afternoon and evening has been, and yet what it meant who could say? I was like a poor man's child who, looking out from the cottage window, beholds with amazement a great army traversing the plain before him with banners and music and knows nothing of its errand.

THE END OF THE NORTH WIND

FOR about six weeks from the middle of February we had bitter northerly winds. The frost was not very severe, but the wind penetrated the thickest clothing and searched the house through and through. The shrubs, even the hardiest, were blackened by its virulence. There was scarcely any sunshine, and every now and then a gloomy haze, like the smoke in London suburbs, invaded us. The rise and fall of the barometer meant nothing more than a variation in the strength of the polar current. Growth was nearly arrested, although one morning I found three primroses in a sheltered hollow. Never had the weather seemed more hopeless than towards the close of March. On the last evening of the month the sky was curiously perplexed and agitated notwithstanding there was little movement in the air above or below. Next morning the change had come. The wind had backed to the south, and a storm from the Channel was raging

with torrents of warm rain. O the day that followed! Massive April clouds hung in the air. How much the want of visible support adds to their charm! One enormous cloud, with its base nearly on the horizon, rose up forty-five degrees or so towards the zenith. Its weight looked tremendous, but it floated lightly in the blue which encompassed it. Towards the centre it was swollen and dark, but its edges were dazzling white. While I was watching it, it went away to the east and partly broke up. A new cloud, like and not like, succeeded it. . . . I followed the lane, stopped for a few minutes at a corner where the grassy roadmargin widens out near the tumble-down barn, looked over the gate westward across the valley to the hills beyond, and then went down to the brook that winds along the bottom. It runs in a course which it has cut for itself, and is flanked on either side by delicately-carved miniature cliffs of yellow sandstone overhung with broom and furze. It was full of pure glittering moorwater, which seemed to add light to the stones in its bed, so brilliant was their colour. It fell with incessant, rippling murmur over its little ledges, gathering itself up into pools between each, and so it went on