Not a god, maybe, you have pictured him, not a prince, but surely as a
friend--the mysterious Green Friend of the green silence and the golden
hush of Summer noons. The mysterious Green Friend of the woods! So
strangely by our side all Summer, so strangely gone away. It is in vain
to await him under our morning sycamore, nor under the great maples shall
we find him walking, nor amid the alder thickets discover him, nor yet in
the little ravine beneath the pines. No! he has surely gone away, and his
great house seems empty without him, desolate, filled with lamentation,
all its doors and windows open to the Winter snows.

But the Green Friend had left me a message. I found it at the roots of
some violets. "_I shall be back again next year_" he said.




CHAPTER VI

IN THE WAKE OF SUMMER


Yes, it was time to be going, and the thought was much on both our minds.
We had as yet, however, made no plans, had not indeed discussed any; but
one afternoon, late in September, driven indoors by a sudden squall of
rain, I came to Colin with an idea. The night before we had had the first
real storm of the season.

"Ah! This will do their business," Colin had said, referring to the
trees, as we heard the wind and rain tearing and splashing through the
pitch-dark woods. "It will be a different world in the morning."