46 THE JONATHAN PAPERS 



never seem to mat down, thick-set with the 

 tall brown stalks of last year s goldenrod and 

 mullein and primrose. The trees and bushes 

 are dwarf oaks, with their old leafage still 

 clinging in tawny masses, and willows, with 

 their bunches of slim, yellow shoots. Even the 

 little river is yellow-brown, from the sand and 

 pebbles and leaves of its bed, and the sun, as 

 it slants down the length of the valley, wraps 

 it in a warm, yellow haze. 



I call the valley mine, for no one else seems 

 to know it. The long grass is never cut, but 

 left to wave its glory of yellow all through the 

 fall and winter and spring. There is a little 

 footpath running through it, but I never see 

 any one on it. I often wonder who makes 

 all the footpaths I know, where no one ever 

 seems to pass. Is it rabbits, or ghosts? Who 

 ever they may be, in this case they do not 

 trouble me, and the valley is as much mine as 

 though I had cut it out of a mediaeval romance. 



It is always very quiet here. At least it 

 seems so, though full of sound, as the world 

 always is. But its sounds are its own; perhaps 

 that is the secret; the rustle of the oak leaves 

 as the wind fumbles among them; the swish- 



