The professor gathered his papers and stood up.  Then there came a heavy rolling sound—­the unmistakable boom of distant thunder.  He said that the gentleman who had left so abruptly had quite misconstrued the tenour of his paper.  So far from intending to describe farmers as lacking in intelligence, all he wished to show was that they did not use their natural abilities, from a certain traditionary bowing to custom.  They did not like their neighbours to think that they were doing anything novel.  No one respected the feelings that had grown up and strengthened from childhood, no one respected the habits of our ancestors, more than he did; no one knew better the solid virtues that adorned the homes of agriculturists.  Far, indeed, be it from him to say aught—­[Boom! and the rattling of rain against the window]—­aught that could—­but he saw that gentlemen were anxious to get home, and would conclude.

A vote of thanks was hurriedly got over, and the assembly broke up and hastened down the staircase.  They found the passage below so blocked with farmers who had crowded in out of the storm that movement was impossible.  The place was darkened by the overhanging clouds, the atmosphere thick and close with the smoke and 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.