288 IN BERKSHIRE FIELDS 



thought of the old black-walnut instrument which 

 used to repose, when not in use, on our old black- 

 walnut "whatnot" in the sitting-room, with its box 

 of photographs and The Boys of '76. I recalled 

 especially the pictures of "Niagara in Winter," 

 which were my greatest delight. Memories of the 

 old "whatnot" in the old yellow house in the old, 

 quiet days when Middlesex County knew not the 

 motor nor the trolley, when eggs were a cent apiece 

 and you reached grandfather's house in a stage- 

 coach, almost made me forget my mountain. 



When I looked again — I don't know how much 

 later — long, chill, wraithlike fingers of shadow were 

 sneaking down the slopes. First they clutched the 

 deeper ravines. Then they took hold of the gray 

 cliffs and wiped slowly off all the irregularities, till 

 the cliffs were stubborn rock no more, no more 

 tempting and dangerous paths to the peak, up which 

 I had often scaled with a rope, but strange, down- 

 dropping sheets of some ethereal substance, com- 

 pounded of darkness and gauze, which no mortal 

 could scale any more than he could scale a cloud. 

 My mountain would have been chill and forbidding 

 now, had it not been for the fact that high aloft, on 

 the shoulder of the next buttress to the south, the 

 invisible sun, streaming its rays through a gap, 

 played a golden light upon the trees and promised 

 a vision, from that high eminence, over the western 

 world rim into that mystic land which forever lies 

 "beyond the sunset and the baths of all the western 

 stars." 



I watched, wistfully, this golden spot-light rise 

 slowly up the shoulder and fade away, chased off, 



