157 



JUST BEFORE WINTER, 



A RICH tint of russet deepened on the forest top, and 

 seemed to sink day by day deeper into the foliage like 

 a stain ; riper and riper it grew, as an apple colours. 

 Broad acres these of the last crop, the crop of leaves ; a 

 thousand thousand quarters, the broad earth will be 

 their barn. A warm red lies on the hill-side above the 

 woods, as if the red dawn stayed there through the day ; 

 it is the heath and heather seeds ; and higher still, a 

 pale yellow fills the larches. The whole of the great hill 

 glows with colour under the short hours of the October 

 sun ; and overhead, where the pine-cones hang, the sky 

 is of the deepest azure. The conflagration of the woods 

 burning luminously crowds into those short hours a 

 brilliance the slow summer does not know. 



The frosts and mists and battering rains that follow 

 in quick succession after the equinox, the chill winds 

 that creep about the fields, have ceased a little while, 

 and there is a pleasant sound in the fir trees. Every- 

 thing is not gone yet. In the lanes that lead down to 

 the ' shaws ' in the dells, the ' gills,' as these wooded 

 depths are called, buckler ferns, green, fresh, and elegantly 

 fashioned, remain under the shelter of the hazel-lined 

 banks. From the tops of the ash wands, where the 

 linnets so lately sang, coming up from the stubble, the 



