ont of their humble domain, and laughed for joy to see
the monstrous caravan come clattering out of the unknown, bearing the
faces by. The smallest child, a little cherubic tow-head, whose cheeks
were smeared with clean earth and the tracks of forgotten tears, stood
upright on a fence-post, and blew the most impudent of kisses to the
strangers on a journey.

Beyond this they came into a great plain, acres and acres of green
rag-weed where the wheat had grown, all so flat one thought of an
enormous billiard table, and now, where the railroad crossed the country
roads, they saw the staunch brown thistle, sometimes the sumach,
and always the graceful iron-weed, slender, tall, proud, bowing a
purple-turbaned head, or shaking in an agony of fright when it stood
too close to the train. The fields, like great, flat emeralds set in
new metal, were bordered with golden-rod, and at sight of this the heart
leaped; for the golden-rod is a symbol of stored granaries, of ripe
sheaves, of the kindness of the season generously given and abundantly
received; more, it is the token of a land of promise and of bounteous
fulfilment; and the plant stains its blossom with yellow so that when it
falls it pays tribute to the ground which has nourished it.

From the plain they passed again into a thick wood, where ruddy arrows
of the sun glinted among the boughs; and, here and there, one saw a
courtly maple or royal oak wearing a gala mantle of crimson and
pale brown, gallants of the forest preparing early for the October
masquerade, when they should hold wanton carnival, before they stripped
them of their finery for pious gray.

And when the coughing engine drew them to the borders of this wood, they
rolled out into another rich plain of green and rust-colored corn; and
far to the south John Harkless marked a winding procession of sycamores,
which, he knew, followed the course of a slender stream; and the waters
of the stream flowed by a bank where wild thyme might have grown, and
where, beyond an orchard and a rose-garden, a rustic bench was placed in
the shade of the trees; and the name of the stream was Hibbard's Creek.
Here the land lay flatter than elsewhere; the sky came closer, with a
gentler benediction; the breeze blew in, laden with keener spices;
there was the flavor of apples and the smell of the walnut and a hint
of coming frost; the immeasurable earth lay more patiently to await the
husbandman; and the whole world seemed to exte