ns, blazed a moment at the
zenith, and then went on. The golden hours followed, each one making the
shadows a little longer, the earth more radiant, if that could be.

Upon the hills were set the blood-red seals of the frost. Every maple,
robed in glory, had taken on the garments of royalty. The air shimmered
with the amethystine haze of Indian Summer, that veil of luminous mist,
vibrant with colour, which Autumn weaves on her loom.

Margaret went out, leaving the door ajar for Lynn. There were few keys
in East Lancaster. A locked door was discourteous--a reflection upon the
integrity of one's neighbours.

From the elms the yellow leaves were dropping, like telegrams from the
high places, saying that Summer had gone. She turned at the corner and
went east, the long light throwing her shadow well before her. "It
is like Life," she mused, smiling; "we go through it, following
shadows--things that vanish when there is a shifting of the light."

Across the clover fields, where the dried blossoms stirred in their
sleep as she passed, through the upland pastures, stony and barren,
with the pools overgrown, through a fallow field, shorn of its harvest,
where only the tiny lace-makers spread their webs amidst the stubble,
Margaret's way was all familiar, and yet sadly changed.

A meadow-lark, the last one of his kind, winged a leisurely way
southward, singing as he flew. A squirrel flaunted his bushy tail, gave
her a daring backward glance, and scurried up a tree. She laughed, and
paused at the entrance to the forest.

Once she had stood there, thrilled to her inmost soul. Again she had
waited there, white to the lips with pain. Now she had outgrown it,
had learned peace, and the long years slipped away, each with its own
burden.

The wood was exquisitely still. A nut dropped now and then, and a
belated bird called to its mate. The swift patter of fairy feet echoed
and re-echoed through the long aisles. The air was crystalline, yet full
of colour, and the gold and crimson leaves floated idly back and forth.
It needed only a passing wind, at the right moment and from the right
place, to make a rainbow then and there.

She went farther into the wood, with a sense of friendliness for the
well-known way. Just at the turn of the path, she stopped, amazed. At
their trysting-place, where the wide rock was laid at the foot of the
oak, someone had reared an altar and blazoned a cross upon the stone.

Her eyes filled, for she k