from his burrow; and close over me, as if I too had grown and
blossomed there, bends a rank, purple-flowered ironweed. We understand
each other; we are children of the same mother, nourished at the same
abundant breast, the weed and I, and the woodchuck, and the wheeling
hawk, and the piled-up clouds, and the shouldering slopes against the
sky--I am brother to them all. And this is home, this earth and
sky--these fruitful fields, and wooded hills, and marshes of reed and
river flowing out to meet the sea. I can ask for no fairer home, none
larger, none of more abundant or more golden corn. If aught is
wanting, if just a tinge of shadow mingles with the rowan-scented haze,
it is the early-falling twilight, the thought of my days, how short
they are, how few of them find me with the freedom of these October
fields, and how soon they must fade into November.

No, the thought of November does not disturb me. There is one glory of
the sun and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars;
for one star differeth from another star in glory. So also are the
months and seasons. And if I watch closely I shall see that not only
are the birds leaving, but the muskrats are building their winter
lodges, the frogs are bedding, the buds putting on their thick, furry
coats--life everywhere preparing for the cold. I need to take the same
precaution,--even in my heart. I will take a day out of October, a day
when the woods are aflame with color, when the winds are so slow that
the spiders are ballooning, and lying where I can see them ascending
and the parachute seeds go drifting by, I will watch until my eyes are
opened to see larger and plainer things go by--the days with the round
of labor until the evening; the seasons with their joyous waking, their
eager living; their abundant fruiting, and then their sleeping--for
they must needs sleep. First the blade, then the ear, after that the
full corn in the ear, and after that the field of fodder. If so with
the corn and the seasons, why not so with life? And what of it all
could be fairer or more desirable than its October?--to lie and look
out over a sunlit meadow to a field of fodder cut and shocked against
the winter with my own hands!

[Illustration: Going back to town]

XV

GOING BACK TO TOWN

"Labor Day, and school lunches begin to-morrow," She said, carefully
drying one of the "Home Comforts" that had been growing dusty on an
upper shelf since the