gorgeousness of their real nature, making of the hills things out
of an Arabian Nights dream in the golden prime of good Haroun
Alraschid.

You may never know what scarlet and crimson really are until you
see them in their perfection on an October hillside, under the
unfathomable blue of an autumn sky. All the glow and radiance and
joy at earth's heart seem to have broken loose in a splendid
determination to express itself for once before the frost of
winter chills her beating pulses. It is the year's carnival ere
the dull Lenten days of leafless valleys and penitential mists
come.

The time of apple-picking had come around once more and we worked
joyously. Uncle Blair picked apples with us, and between him and
the Story Girl it was an October never to be forgotten.

"Will you go far afield for a walk with me to-day?" he said to her
and me, one idle afternoon of opal skies, pied meadows and misty hills.

It was Saturday and Peter had gone home; Felix and Dan were
helping Uncle Alec top turnips; Cecily and Felicity were making
cookies for Sunday, so the Story Girl and I were alone in Uncle
Stephen's Walk.

We liked to be alone together that last month, to think the long,
long thoughts of youth and talk about our futures. There had
grown up between us that summer a bond of sympathy that did not
exist between us and the others. We were older than they--the
Story Girl was fifteen and I was nearly that; and all at once it