little dust paths made by sheep in the hot months when they had
sought those roofs of leaves. The fall of acorns, leaping out of
their matted, green cups as they strike the rooty earth. The fall
of red haw, persimmon, and pawpaw, and the odorous wild plum in its
valley thickets. The fall of all seeds whatsoever of the forest,
now made ripe in their high places and sent back to the ground,
there to be folded in against the time when they shall arise again
as the living generations; the homing, downward flight of the seeds
in the many-colored woods all over the quiet land.

In the fields, too, the sights and sounds of falling, the fall of
the standing fatness. The silent fall of the tobacco, to be hung
head downward in fragrant sheds and barns. The felling whack of the
corn-knife and the rustling of the blades, as the workman gathers
within his arm the top-heavy stalks and presses them into the
bulging shock. The fall of pumpkins into the slow-drawn wagons, the
shaded side of them still white with the morning rime. In the
orchards, the fall of apples shaken thunderously down, and the
piling of these in sprawling heaps near the cider mills. In the
vineyards the fall of sugaring grapes into the baskets and the
bearing of them to the winepress in the cool sunshine, where there
is the late droning of bees about the sweet pomace.

But of all that the earth has yielded with or without the farmer's
help, of all that he can call his own within the limits of his
land, nothing pleases him better than those still, brown fields
where the shapely stacks stand amid the deadened trees. Two months
have passed, the workmen are at it again. The stacks are torn down,
the bundles scattered, the hemp spread out as once before. There to
lie till it shall be dew-retted or rotted; there to suffer freeze