looked at it with a meditative air, while
Paul was speaking.

"It is later than I thought," she said,
slowly. "Tell the coachman to drive
straight into town. I must buy my fan by
daylight. Never mind the Cascine. Go
on."

She looked very imperial and grand,
leaning back in the handsome carriage,
and folded in a soft cloud of black lace.
Peasant women passed and stared at her.
Peasant children shouted. Working men,
returning from their daily labour, shaded
their eyes to look at her, dashing by.

Paul sat, square-shouldered and steady,
beside the coachman. And the pleasure of
her weak, selfish vanity, and the petty
delight of being admired and envied by poor
ignorant passers, was dashed with a bitter
drop—the consciousness that that man was
invested with power to control her movements,
and that, brave it out as she might,
she was a slave, and Paul her keeper.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE NORTH.       LINCOLN TO SOMERSBY.

IF old Harry really is in the habit of
"looking over Lincoln," as the proverb
says, then the crow looks over old Harry,
for he is now perched with a fine view of
wolds, heaths, and fens, high above the
valley of the Witham, on the topmost grey
pinnacle of one of the grand central towers
of Lincoln cathedral. Upon six counties
looks down the favoured bird; at his feet
lies the damp amphibious Holland of
England, the land of the grebe and tern,
paradise of the wild duck, the city of refuge of
the lapwing and water-hen; below him,
indeed, lies more than this, there lies a
region won from the sea by the hands and
brains of men, a great conquest of man's
mind over the brute forces that war against
the progress of our race.

That original, but rather crotchetty
Lincolnshire antiquary, Dr. Stukeley, whom his
friend Warburton called "a mixture of
simplicity, drollery, absurdity, ingenuity,
superstition, and antiquarianism," has
some remarkable and ingenious theories
about the origin of Lincolnshire, in which
he takes us, as it were, into the very
workshop of creation. He first notices that
in England the eastern shore is generally
flat and low, while the western is steep
and rocky. In the same way mountains,
not only in Britain, but all over the world,
are usually steep and abrupt to the west,
and descend to gentle declivities on the
east, while plains, as a rule, always
descend eastward. The reason for this, says
Stukeley, is, that when the half-solid earth
began first its diurnal motion, the
mountain part, still soft, flew westward, as the
dirt, by its vis inertiæ, will fly from a wheel
in a contrary way to its motion. "Thus,"
says the amiable philosopher, with entire
self-complacency, "it is that we have
so large a quantity of this marsh land
in the middle of the eastern shore of
England, seeming as if made by the washing
and sluices of the many rivers that fall
that way, such as the Welland, the Witham,
the Nene, the Ouse, great and little, together
with many other streams of inferior note.
These all empty themselves into the great
bay formed between the Lincolnshire wolds
and the cliffs of Norfolk, called by Ptolemy
(reign of Hadrian) Metaris Æstuarium."

In October, 1571, a great tempest and
inundation swept the wide, flat, green country
over which the crow now casts his eye.
Three score vessels were lost on the coasts
of Boston and Grimsby. Three arches of
Wansford-bridge were carried away by
the sudden and devastating torrent. Poor
"Master Pellam," of Mumby Chappell lost
one thousand one hundred sheep; but then
how could he stop to lament when all
Mumby Chappell itself, but three houses
and the church steeple, were destroyed? A
strange thing, too, happened in this same
Mumby, for a ship driving upon a house,
the frightened sailors took it for a rock,
and leaping out of the foundering bark and
clambering on the roof were saved. They
also rescued the poor woman in the house
who climbed up to them, when her husband
and child were both drowned. Between
Hummerston and Grimsby, one Mr. Specers
lost a great number of sheep. The shepherd
about noon came to his mistress and asked
for his dinner; to which she replied, crossly,
he should have none of her. Just at that
moment the sharp-tongued shrew happened
to look towards the marshes where
her husband's sheep were, and saw the
water break in with a fierce and irresistible
rush. She said, chidingly, "He is not a
good shepherd that would not venture his
life for his sheep." Upon which the man
ran to drive home the sheep; but he and
they were all drowned, and when the
inundation subsided the faithful fellow was
found dead standing upright in a ditch,
into which he must have fallen unawares.
Four gentlemen of Kelsey and Maplethorpe,
lost together about twenty thousand
head of cattle. Bourne was overflowed