DAYS OF AUTUMN 167 



me with great sadness. No birds sang in 

 the woods. By the mere, about this time, 

 hundreds of swallows would gather. Rest- 

 lessly they clung to the sedges and the 

 rushes, whose tips were beginning to brown 

 and make faint whisper in the wind; now 

 flinging themselves into the air, twittering, 

 mounting high, wheeling and slipping, now 

 descending like a shower of iron darts to 

 the border of the lake. Sometimes on my 

 way to school I went to watch them, being 

 caught occasionally as I crept in through 

 an unofficial entrance to the school, and 

 punishment ensued. What use to explain 

 the poignant feelings about autumn and 

 the departure of my beautiful swallows to 

 lands where I could not follow ? More im- 

 portant to the boy were his forced learnings 

 than his blundering and unconscious poetry; 

 and the sunlight came through the window, 

 making him miserable. In fancy he was 

 roaming the old hills, or dreaming by the 



brook; and that was indolence he would 

 L.S. M 



