In the afternoon, however, the mist thickened again, and the whole village shrunk again within it, like a turtle within its shell. The next morning dawned without its misty mask, but with it rose a gusty wind that commenced howling like a famished wolf. Alas! for the glories of the woods! As the rude gusts rushed from the slaty clouds, the rich leaves came fluttering upon them, blotting the air and falling on the earth thick as snow-flakes. Now a maple-leaf, like a scalloped ruby, would fly whirling over and over; next a birch one would flash across the sight, as if a topaz had acquired wings; and then a shred of the oak's imperial mantle, flushed like a sardonyx, would cut a few convulsive capers in the air, like a clown in a circus, and dash itself headlong upon the earth. Altogether it was an exciting time, this fall of the leaf. Ah! a voice also was constantly whispering in my ear, "we all do fade as the leaf!" I took a walk in the woods. What a commotion was there! The leaves were absolutely frantic. Now they would sweep up far into the air as if they never intended to descend again, and then taking curvatures, would skim away like birds; others would cluster together, and then roll along like a great quivering billow; others again would circle around in eddies like whirlpools, soaring up now and then in the likeness of a water-spout, whilst frequently tall columns would march down the broad aisles of the forest in the most majestic manner, and finally fall to pieces in a violent spasm of whirling atoms. Even after the leaves had found their way to the earth they were by no means quiet. Some skipped uneasily over the surface; some stood on one leg, as it were, and pirouetted; some crept further and further under banks; some ran merry races over the mounds, and some danced up and down in the hollows. As for the trees themselves, they were cowering and shivering at a tremendous rate, apparently from want of the cloaks of which every blast was thus stripping them. A day or two after came the veritable soft-looking, sweet-breathing Indian-Summer--"our thunder." No other clime has it. Autumn expires in a rain-storm of three months in Italy; and it is choked to death with a wet fog in England; but in this new world of ours, "our own green forest land," as Halleck beautifully says, it swoons away often in a delicious trance, during which the sky is filled with sleep, and the earth hushes itself into the most peaceful and placid repose. There it lies basking away until with one growl old Winter springs upon Nature, locks her in icy fetters, and covers her bosom with a white mantle that generally stays there until Spring comes with her soft eye and blue-bird voice to make us all glad again.