crimson, but such a color as an artist might
make if he crushed together on his palette the rose of summer and the
leaf of autumn. The chill of the coming night was in the air, but
still we lingered at the gate, Aunt Jane and I, with our faces toward
the west.

"I wonder how many folks are watchin' this sunset," she remarked at
last. "Old Job Matthews, after he got converted at the big revival
back yonder in the thirties, used to look for the second comin' of the
Lord, and every sunset and sunrise he'd stand and look at the sky and
say, 'Maybe the King of Glory is at hand.' Once the old man declared
he saw a chariot in the clouds, and it does look like, child, that
somethin' ought to happen after a sight like this, or else it ain't
worth while to git it up jest for a few people like you and me to look
at."

As she spoke there was a quick, sharp clang of hoofs on the
macadamized road, and a horse and rider passed in the twilight. The
clean, even gait of the horse and the outlines of its head showed it
to be of noble blood; and as it trotted past with an air of proud
alertness, we could see that the dumb animal realized the double share
of responsibility laid upon it. For the hand that held the bridle was
limp and nerveless, the rider's head was sunk on his breast, and the
brain of the man that should have guided the brain of the horse was
locked in a poison-stupor.

Long and wistfully Aunt Jane gazed after the horse and its rider, and
the gathering darkness could not hide the divine sorrow and pity that
looked out from her aged eyes. Sighing heavily she turned from the
gate, and we went back to the shadowy room where the "unlit lamp" and
the unkindled fire lay ready for the evening hours.

The fireplace was filled with brush cleared that day from the
flower-beds, dry stems that had borne the verdure and bloom of a
spring and now lay on their funeral pyre, ready to be translated, as
by a chariot of fire, into the elemental air and earth from whence
they had sprung.

Aunt Jane struck a match under the old mantel and, stooping, touched
the dead mass with the finger of flame.

Ah! the first fires of autumn! There is more than light and more than
heat in their radiance. But as I watched the flames leap with exultant
roar into the gloom of the old chimney, my heart was with the lonely
man homeward bound, his sorrowful, helpless figure a silhouette
against the sunset sky, and Aunt Jane, too, looked with absent eyes at