AFTERMATH 323 



their nuts, and many a wise red squirrel has made 

 hoard of them. Young Oaks, tenacious of leaf, 

 form a wind-break toward the north, so that here 

 and there a tuft of Canada Goldenrod is blos- 

 soming, with fresh Dandelions at its roots, both 

 under shelter of Wild Lettuce, gone to fluffy seed, 

 while at intervals, until the lane .becomes merely a 

 wheel -track in the meadow, tall bushes of Winter - 

 berry flame up like fires of a wayside gypsy camp. 



Down on the Sound's edge the change from 

 the growing to the resting season of flower and 

 fern is often veiled in the sea mist following the 

 cold storm, and when it lifts, Indian Summer pos- 

 sesses the meadows, the reprieve that the Ma- 

 gician sends to soften the austerity of frost. 



For two weeks we had looked out upon a 

 clearly etched landscape of Autumn, ripened, not 

 rent, by the shock of frost, where everything was 

 seen at a glance and in detail, from the acorns that 

 the Jays pilfered from the Oaks, beneath the win- 

 dows, to the cornstalks silhouetted against the sky 

 on the hill limit of the horizon. The air was so 

 rarefied that the oxen plodding solemnly along the 

 hill -top appeared gigantic, and like the strange 

 winged beasts of the Apocalypse. 



