Page 222 (1/1)
That brief and lovely season which in our Northland for a score of days checks the white onset of the snow, and which we call the Indian summer, bloomed in November when the last red leaf had fluttered to the earth A fairy summer, for the vast arches of the skies burned sapphire and amethyst, and hill and woodland, innocent of verdure, were clothed in tints of faintest rose and cloudy violet; and all the world put on a ic livery, nor was there leaf nor stem nor swale nor tuft of old, deep-veined or crusted lavishly, where the crested oaks spread, burnished by the sun
Snowbird and goldfinch ith us--the latter veiling his splendid tints in modest russet; and now, froray and rose, outriders of winter's crystal cortège, still halting somewhere far in the silvery north, where the white owls sit in the firs, and the world lies robed in errew strong, and her hurts had nearly healed And I, writing -rooht make her first essay to leave her chamber that day--sit in the outer sunshine perhaps, perhaps stand upright and take a step or two And, at this first tryst in the sunshine, she was to set our wedding day
Froainst the azure nificence of the sky, and the calolden pond, and the white sails of sloops, becal the blue woods
A little streah a lawn all starred with late-grown dandelions; and even yet the trout were running up to the still sands of their breeding-nooks above--great brilliant fish, spotted with flecks that glowed like living sparks; and now I looked to see if I ay in their bridal-dress of iridescent geood speed to their shadooodland tryst
Too deeply happy, too content to more than trifle with the letters Ifor her I loved, watching the fair world in the sunshine there So, I unfolded for the hundredth tienerous letter from Sir Peter and Lady Coleville--so kindly, so cordial, so honorable, all patched with shreds of gossip of friend and foe, and ho York lay stunned at the news of Yorktown Never a word of the part that I had played so long beneath their roof--only one grave, unselfish line, saying that they had heardat Johnstown battle, and that they had always known that I could conduct in no wise unworthy of a soldier