Possibly it was the vein of poetry in Daniel which made him a
coward--which made him so vulnerable. During the autumn he reveled in
the tints of the landscape which his sitting-room windows commanded.
There were many maples and oaks. Day by day the roofs of the houses in
the village became more evident, as the maples shed their crimson and
gold and purple rags of summer. The oaks remained, great shaggy masses
of dark gold and burning russet; later they took on soft hues, making
clearer the blue firmament between the boughs. Daniel watched the autumn
trees with pure delight. "He will go to-day," he said of a flaming maple
after a night of frost which had crisped the white arches of the grass
in his dooryard. All day he sat and watched the maple cast its glory,
and did not bother much with his simple meals. The Wise house was
erected on three terraces. Always through the dry summer the grass was
burned to an ugly negation of color. Later, when rain came, the grass
was a brilliant green, patched with rosy sorrel and golden stars of
arnica. Then later still came the diamond brilliance of the frost. So
dry were the terraces in summer-time that no flowers would flourish.
When Daniel's mother had come to the house as a bride she had planted
under a window a blush-rose bush, but always the blush-roses were few
and covered with insects. It was not until the autumn, when it was time
for the flowers to die, that the sorrel blessing of waste lands flushed
rosily and the arnica showed its stars of slender threads of gold, and
there might even be a slight glimpse of purple aster and a dusty spray
or two of goldenrod. Then Daniel did not shrink from the sight of the
terraces. In summer-time the awful negative glare of them under the
afternoon sun maddened him.

In winter he often visited his brother John in the village. He was very
fond of John, and John's wife, and their only daughter, Dora. When John
died, and later his wife, he would have gone to live with Dora, but
she married. Then her husband also died, and Dora took up dressmaking,
supporting herself and her delicate little girl-baby. Daniel adored this
child. She had been named for him, although her mother had been aghast
before the proposition. "Name a girl Daniel, uncle!" she had cried.

"She is going to have what I own after I have done with it, anyway,"
declared Daniel, gazing with awe and rapture at the tiny flannel bundle
in his niece's arms. "That won't make any differe