Summer's Afterglow 243 



spirit of disquiet into the windless splendour of 

 the sun-bathed and flame-caught woodlands, and 

 speak of the imminent change. It is the sense of 

 transitoriness in the beauty of such an October 

 landscape which gives it the supreme touch of 

 charm. To-day the boughs hang golden in the 

 wood, the stain of the heather is rich upon the 

 moor, and all the scene is enfolded in security by 

 the fullness of a summer sun. Yet we know that 

 when the next storm roars up from the sea, or the 

 frost strikes down from a sky of bitter grey, the sun 

 will shine forth again on a changed and barer 

 world. 



St. Martin's Day falls often in the midst of a 

 spell of warm, light airs, and of that delicately 

 brilliant sunshine which rests like a tranquil memory 

 of bygone summer over the last splendours of the 

 year. In years when the slow change of the 

 autumn foliage finds the elms at the beginning of 

 November still scarcely clouded with yellow, the 

 mists of the next ten days turn the green of every 

 bough to orange and gold. As the white mist of 

 the chill November morning thins and takes wing 

 from the well-known hedgerows and lanes, there 

 seems something strange and magical in this sudden 

 splendour wrought by a few declining days, as the 

 high crowns and billowy outlines of the branches 

 stand forward into the bright yet tender Martinmas 

 sun. On the slopes at the foot of the hills in many 

 southern counties, where the elms are grouped 

 so numerously as to hide every other tree, the 



