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The autumn wind blew in great gusts over the rocky island of Guernsey, and in the country parishes rushed up hill and down dale, leaving not a lane undisturbed by its vagaries. It rattled the leafless trees which grew at the back of Colomberie Farm, whose deep brown-thatched roof rested against the lichened red tiles of the barn adjoining.

Surely the hum of wheels and clatter of printing presses, to let alone the lecturers with their black coats and tumblers of water, have driven away the goblin kingdom and made silent the feet of the little dancers. Old Biddy Hart at any rate does not think so. Our bran-new opinions have never been heard of under her brown-thatched roof tufted with yellow stone-crop.

Mayhap if you stood long enough you might grow shorter. They say men do, as they become older." She ran a cool, amused eye over his long, well-proportioned figure, taking in the butter-nut coloured trousers, the foppish waistcoat, the high-collared blue coat, and the handsome brown-thatched head that topped the whole creation.

In the upper half, this hill was pretty well wooded and the road cut clean through the wood, but between us and the wood there lay the level crest of the hill, cut by hedges into several fields, and crossed by a rough cart-track leading past a roomy, one-storied cottage, grey-walled and brown-thatched, and on through the wood into the main road.

Coming here one evening on his way to a hut beyond the wood where he now slept, he noticed that the familiar brown-thatched pinion of his paternal roof had vanished from its site, and that the walls were levelled.

In the distance it is deep blue; as it approaches it grows more and more green; then separate forms of palms and bamboos can be distinguished, with red-tiled or brown-thatched roofs showing between them. Immediately beneath me is the brown river Tjiliwong, with bamboo cottages on its banks and natives bathing in its waters. Inside the courtyard no one is stirring.

As we advanced up the Camino de Chasna, a road only by name, the quintas were succeeded by brown-thatched huts, single or in clumps. The magnificent old tree, which was full grown in the days of the conquest, and which in the seventeenth century was a favourite halting-point, suffered severely from the waterspout of November 7, 1826; but still measured 130 feet long by 29 in girth.