THE CROWN ON THE HILL 





PON an evening in November the panting 

 of the wind was at last lulled, and he rested 

 from his tremendous labours succeeding 

 the equinox. All things under the sky 

 were very still ; earth mused in silence ; woods, hills, 

 valleys seemed possessed with a sort of wonder at the 

 great peace now nestling within them ; and westering 

 light deepened to red-gold as the sun sank upon the 

 horizon. It was a moment in which one could see 

 the air taking visible shape ; it was an hour when one 

 might note the atmosphere hanging opaline against 

 background of hills and valleys, softening with its 

 radiance the avenues of the firs. A veil of azure 

 blue stole above the russet fern between me and the 

 sunset. It wound upward, like incense smoke, 

 amid the yellow spires of the larches and the silver 

 stems of the birch. Neither fog nor mist was it that 

 I saw, but the sweet, keen breath of November, the 

 very expiration of Nature, here sleeping her first 

 winter sleep under groves of silence. Sunlight rippled 

 across a great woodland aisle, whose pillars were the 

 fir trees ; shadows mottled stem, branch, and sad- 



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