JUST BEFORE WINTER. 
A RICH tint of russet deepened on the forest top, and 
seemed to sink day by day deeper into the foliage like 
a stain; riper and riper it grew, as an apple colours. 
Broad acres these of the last crop, the crop of leaves ; a 
thousand thousand quarters, the broad earth will be 
their barn. A warm red lies on the hill-side above the 
woods, as if the red dawn stayed there through the day ; 
it is the heath and heather seeds ; and higher still, a 
‘pale yellow fills the larches. The whole of the great hill 
glows with colour under the short hours of the October 
sun; and overhcad, where the pine-cones hang, the sky 
is of the decpest azure. The conflagration of the woods 
burning luminously crowds into those short hours a 
brilliance the slow summer does not know. 
The frosts and mists and battering rains that follow 
in quick succession after the equinox, the chill winds 
that creep about the fields, have ceased a little while, 
and there is a pleasant sound in the fir trees. Every- 
thing is not gone yet. In the lanes that lead down to 
the ‘shaws’ in the dells, the ‘gills as these wooded 
depths are called, buckler ferns, green, fresh, and elegantly 
fashioned, remain under the shelter of the hazel-lined 
banks. From the tops of the ash wands, where the 
‘linnets so lately sang, coming up from the stubble, the 
