we had journeyed thus suddenly not only to autumn, but to
winter itself.

But at noon the sun was hot again. The new-born brimstone butterflies
were upon the wing, a flutter of lambent green. They were of the time,
and young. They must live all winter and waken every sunny day till
next spring--the ambassadors of this summer to the next.

All that belongs to the past is tired, and even at the bidding of
the sun insect life is loth to rise. The grasshopper is tired, the
dragon-fly loves to crouch among the shadows, the summer-worsted
fritillary butterflies pick themselves out of their resting-places to
flutter a little further; their wings, once thick with yellow down and
shapely, are now all broken, transparent, ragged.

The tramp's summer also is over. He will not lie full length in the
sun till the spring comes round again. For the ground is wet, and the
cold is searching. I walked more miles in the cold fortnight that took
me to Batoum than in a whole month before New Athos. There was in the
air a sting "that bids nor sit nor stand, but go."

Yet thoughts were plentiful, and many memories of past autumns came
back to me. How many are the rich, melancholy afternoons of late
October or early November, golden afternoons that occur year after
year, when one feels one's thoughts parting from the mind easily and
plentifully without urging, as overripe fruit falling at last since no
one has grasped it before.

I hurried along the road, full of sad thoughts. The year was growing
to be an old man. It looked back at spring, at the early days when it
first felt the promises of life's glory and scarcely dared believe
them true, at laughing May, at wide and spacious June, and then the
turning of the year.

It almost seemed to me that I had grown old with the year, that I had
even gathered in my fruits, as indeed I had, only they were more the
year's fruits than mine: I had been the guest of the year.

I walked as within sight of a goal. In my imagination I saw ahead of
me the winter stretches of country that I should come to, all white
with snow, the trees all hoar, the people all frosted. I had literally
become aware of the fact that I was travelling not only over land but
over time. In the far horizon of the imagination I looked to the snowy
landscapes of winter, and they lay across the road, hiding it, so that
it seemed I should go no further.

Old age, old age; I was an old, bearded, heavy-going, wrinkled tramp,
le