any clouds in the summer sky, and those
that were there were never of that soft, high-piled white downiness that
belongs to summer clouds farther south. They came up in the west at
evening in time for the sunset, or they lay along the east in the early
morning, but they did not drift over the zenith in white laziness at
noontide, or come together violently in sudden thunder-storms. They were
sober clouds of quiet hue, and they seemed to know that they were not to
have a prominent place in the summer procession of night, noon, and
morning in that Northern sky, as though there was a law that the sun
should have uninterrupted sway during the short season allotted to him.
Anne walked in the woods as usual, but not far. Rast was gone. Rast
always hurried everybody; left alone, she wandered slowly through the
aisles of the arbor vitae on the southern heights. The close ranks of
these trees hardly made what is called a grove, for the flat green plats
of foliage rose straight into the air, and did not arch or mingle with
each other; a person walking there could always see the open sky above.
But so dense was the thickness on each side that though the little paths
with which the wood was intersected often ran close to each other,
sometimes side by side, persons following them had no suspicion of each
other's presence unless their voices betrayed them. In the hot sun the
trees exhaled a strong aromatic fragrance, and as the currents of air
did not penetrate their low green-walled aisles, it rested there,
although up above everything was dancing along--butterflies, petals of
the brier, waifs and strays from the forest, borne lakeward on the
strong breeze. The atmosphere in these paths was so hot, still, and
aromatic that now and then Anne loved to go there and steep herself in
it. She used to tell Miss Lois that it made her feel as though she was
an Egyptian princess who had been swathed in precious gums and spices
for a thousand years.

Over on the other side of the island grew the great pines. These had two
deeply worn Indian trails leading through them from north to south, not
aimless, wandering little paths like those through the arbor vitae, but
one straight track from the village to the western shore, and another
leading down to the spring on the beach. The cliffs on whose summit
these pines grew were high and precipitous, overlooking deep water; a
vessel could have sailed by so near the shore that a pebble thrown from
above