were more intimate and kind than is usual.  They lived more together, and were more free and easy in company.  The men were mostly farm labourers, and after their day’s work they would sit out-of-doors on the ground to smoke their pipes; and where the narrow crooked little street was narrowest—­at my end of the village—­when two men would sit opposite each other, each at his own door, with legs stretched out before them, their boots would very nearly touch in the middle of the road.  When walking one had to step over their legs; or, if socially inclined, one could stand by and join in the conversation.  When daylight faded the village was very dark—­no lamp for the visitors—­and very silent, only the low murmur of the sea on the shingle was audible, and the gurgling sound of a swift streamlet flowing from the hill above and hurrying through the village to mingle with the Branscombe lower down in the meadows.  Such a profound darkness and quiet one expects in an inland agricultural village; here, where there were visitors from many distant towns, it was novel and infinitely refreshing.

No sooner was it dark than all were in bed and asleep; not one square path of yellow light was visible.  To enjoy the sensation I went out and sat down, and listened alone to the liquid rippling, warbling sound of the swift-flowing streamlet—­that sweet low music of running water to which the reed-warbler had listened thousands of years ago, striving to imitate it, until his running rippling song was perfect.

A fresh surprise and pleasure awaited me when I explored the coast east of the village; it was bold and precipitous in places, and from the summit of the cliff a very fine view of the coast-line on either hand could be obtained.  Best of all, the face of the cliff itself was the breeding-place of some hundreds of herring-gulls.  The eggs at the period of my visit were not yet hatched, but highly incubated, and at that stage both parents are almost constantly at home, as if in a state of anxious suspense.  I had seen a good many colonies of this gull before at various breeding stations on the coast—­south, west, and east—­but never in conditions so singularly favourable as at this spot.  From the vale where the Branscombe pours its clear waters through rough masses of shingle into the sea the ground to the east rises steeply to a height of nearly five hundred feet; the cliff is thus not nearly so high as many another, but it has features of peculiar interest.  Here, in some former time, there has been a landslip, a large portion of the cliff at its highest part falling below and forming a sloping mass a chalky soil mingled with huge fragments of rock, which lies like a buttress against the vertical precipice and seems to lend it support.  The fall must have occurred a very long time back, as the vegetation that overspreads the rude slope—­hawthorn, furze, and ivy—­has an ancient look.  Here are huge masses of rock standing isolated, that resemble in their forms ruined