pon his marble form in a
winding-sheet of drifting leaves.

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."

And indeed it was. Cruel was the work of dismantling that had gone on
during the night. The roof of the wood had fallen in in a score of
places, letting in the sky through unfamiliar windows; and the distant
prospect showed through the torn tapestry of the trees with a startling
sense of disclosure. The dishevelled world wore the distressed look of a
nymph caught _deshabillee._ The expression, "the naked woods," occurred
to one with almost a sense of impropriety. At least there was a cynical
indecorum in this violent disrobing of the landscape.

"Colin," I said, coming to him with my idea. "We've got to go, of
course, but I've been thinking--don't you hate the idea of being hurled
along in a train, and suddenly shot into the city again, like a package
through a tube?"

"Hate it? Don't ask me," said Colin.

"If only it could be more gradual," I went on. "Suppose, for instance,
instead of taking the train, we should walk it!"

"Walk to New York?" said Colin, with a surprised whistle.

"Yes! Why not?"

"Something of a walk, old man."

"All the b