er with a drowsy light, which casts a less
defined shadow of the still oaks. The yellow and brown leaves in the
oaks, in the elms, and the beeches, in their turn affect the rays, and
retouch them with their own hue. An immaterial mist across the fields
looks like a cloud of light hovering on the stubble: the light itself
made visible.

The tawniness is indistinct, it haunts the sunshine, and is not to be
fixed, any more than you can say where it begins and ends in the
complexion of a brunette. Almost too large for their cups, the acorns
have a shade of the same hue now before they become brown. As it
withers, the many-pointed leaf of the white bryony and the bine as it
shrivels, in like manner, do their part. The white thistle-down, which
stays on the bursting thistles because there is no wind to waft it away,
reflects it; the white is pushed aside by the colour that the stained
sunbeams bring.

Pale yellow thatch on the wheat-ricks becomes a deeper yellow; broad
roofs of old red tiles smoulder under it. What can you call it but
tawniness?--the earth sunburnt once more at harvest time. Sunburnt and
brown--for it deepens into brown. Brown partridges, and pheasants, at a
distance brown, their long necks stretched in front and long tails
behind gleaming in the stubble. Brown thrushes just venturing to sing
again. Brown clover hayricks; the bloom on the third crop yonder, which
was recently a bright colour, is fast turning brown, too.

Here and there a thin layer of brown leaves rustles under foot. The
scaling bark on the lower part of the tree trunks is brown. Dry dock
stems, fallen branches, the very shadows, are not black, but brown. With
red hips and haws, red bryony and woodbine berries, these together cause
the sense rather than the actual existence of a tawny tint. It is
pleasant; but sunset comes so soon, and then after the trees are in
shadow beneath, the yellow spots at the tops of the elms still receive
the light from the west a few moments longer.

There is something nutty in the short autumn day--shorter than its
duration as measured by hours, for the enjoyable day is between the
clearing of the mist and the darkening of the shadows. The nuts are
ripe, and with them is associated wine and fruit. They are hard but
tasteful; if you eat one, you want ten, and after ten, twenty. In the
wine there is a glow, a spot like tawny sunlight; it falls on your hand
as you lift the glass.

They are never really nuts un