218 Orchard Aisles 



its sucker from its place a little above the throng. 

 Then, when a brawl arises, and a wasp brushes 

 against it as it staggers into flight, the butterfly 

 floats forth again lightly beneath the boughs, strik- 

 ing its white spots and bands of crimson athwart 

 the sun, and merging into the shadows with its 

 mantle of softer black. 



The orchard in September seems the very haunt 

 of the fruitfulness of the season, not only because 

 it is here that the year's last harvest ripens, but 

 because the stillness of the autumn sunshine and 

 shadows is here most fully expressed. In such a 

 place, when the September sunlight is constant 

 beyond the boughs, and the only sounds are the 

 occasional fall of an apple, the resonant buzz of a 

 wasp in its hollowed fruit shell, or the rustle of the 

 red admiral's wing, the sense of each passing hour 

 can be lost, and even the coming of night seems 

 a far-off and indifferent event. But into the ten- 

 fold peace of some of the western orchards there 

 sweeps at fixed times, with extraordinary force of 

 contrast, the stir of the restless sea. The great 

 tides that fill the Wye and Severn drive fiercely 

 up the tributary creeks upon their shores, and 

 make the pulse of the ocean felt far among the in- 

 land farms and gardens. Through the hours when 

 the tide in the distant river is low, the brook that 

 runs beside the orchard flows with the peace of an 

 inland stream, though its banks are wet and high, 

 and it is fringed here and there with drift from the 

 outer sea. The sunlight in the orchard falls un- 

 broken, no wind comes near the boughs, and the 



