In spite of discontents I might have remained to this day by the Otter, in the daily and hourly expectation of seeing some new and wonderful thing in Nature in that place where a crimson-eyed carrion-crow had been revealed to me, had not a storm of thunder and rain broken over the country to shake me out of a growing disinclination to move.

We are, body and mind, very responsive to atmospheric changes; for every storm in Nature there is a storm in us--a change physical and mental.

We make our own conditions, it is true, and these react and have a deadening effect on us in the long run, but we are never wholly deadened by them--if we be not indeed dead, if the life we live can be called life.
We are told that there are rainless zones on the earth and regions of everlasting summer: it is hard to believe that the dwellers in such places can ever think a new thought or do a new thing.

The morning rain did not last very long, and before it had quite ceased I took up my knapsack and set off towards the sea, determined on this occasion to make my escape.
Three or four miles from Ottery St.Mary I overtook a cowman driving nine milch cows along a deep lane and inquired my way of him.

He gave me many and minute directions, after which we got into conversation, and I walked some distance with him.