After a time people who had missed and wondered about Stead and Brooke concluded that they had been mistaken; the little gifts of the will were the natural ones to friends and neighbours, and the trust placed in Dr. Russell’s hands was natural, and doubtless for charity, and there was no one in the Hill Country who would deny his fitness to hold it. CHAPTER XX FIRE OF LEAVES Killing frost had come and given the blackening touch to garden and wild hedge-row. Even the hardy chrysanthemums bowed their hoary heads, and a snow-like rime covered the river meadows every morning. The flame was already burning low in the leaf torches of the swamp maples, while the oaks changed to wine and russet slowly, with majestic dignity and pride of hardihood. The modest crops the farm had yielded were divided, and Brooke’s portion of hay, rye, corn on the cob, potatoes, and apples duly stored away under Enoch Fenton’s argus eyes; while even this astute Yankee found nothing to quibble at, so generous had been Maarten’s halving. In fact, when the strange “farmer-on-shares,” after the sharing time, prepared to plough up the corn stubble for burning and harrow the cleared field, Fenton laughed half derisively, and said, “It’s plain to me he’ll never make a farmer,—that harrowing job belongs to next year’s man.” Still Maarten kept on at work, this last week of his stay, for that mysterious source “they say” had informed Adam that the man was homesick and would return to the old country, also that Bisbee knew it to be true and he had bought Maarten’s portion of the crops. So when, one afternoon of late October, Brooke, in a restless mood, looking down the fields toward Moosatuk, saw the opal smoke of burning brush, stubble, and leaves following the fence line just above the brook, while a dark figure moved in and out, stirring and feeding the flames with a trident fork, her feet followed her inclination to go and thank the man who had worked for and halved so well with her, and wish him God-speed. Later, she herself would flit for a time, and though she desired to go, yet she dreaded it. The pleasure season itself was waning, although many of the hill people, especially at Gordon, lingered until Thanksgiving. After this, winter would quickly close in, they told her, and as Rosius would be in Washington executing some commissions, Brooke, urged by the entire household, had agreed to spend the first two winter months there with Mrs. Parks, to study animal anatomy under him.