The “line” being the short for equinox, the imaginary line crossing the sun’s path over which, on March 21st, old Sol is supposed to step from winter into spring. Again, on September 21st, he steps from summer into autumn, takes off his summer hat, with its crown of burning rays, and tells his wife to ask North Star for the key to the iceberg, where his winter flannels are kept in cold storage, so that they may be ready for any emergency. The fact that these storms seldom come upon the days when they are due, simply proves that the solar system prefers to measure time to suit itself. A little before dawn, on Saturday morning, the rain stopped; the heavy clouds in the east broke up into bars of blue steel, through which the sun peered cautiously, as if uncertain whether or not to break them away. Then, suddenly deciding that it would, it signalled to the clear, cool, northwest wind to blow and chase away the vapours that made the clouds too heavy. By the time Tommy Todd’s father came in, carrying two milk-pails, Tommy following with a third, there was promise of a fine crisp autumn day, and Grandpa Todd, who had decided a week before, on his eightieth birthday, that he would give up milking, at least for the winter, came into the well-porch, and scanning the sky carefully, with an air of authority, said: “To-night we’ll have hard frost if the wind drops. We’d better get in those cheese pumpkins jest as soon’s they’re dried off. Robins and Blackbirds flockin’ powerful strong, and old Chief Crow has brung his flock clear down to the ten-acre lot already.” Old Chief was the name that Grandpa Todd had given to a particularly wise bird, whom he insisted was twenty-five years old at the least, who was master of the roost in the cedar woods and, by his wise guidance, kept his flock the largest in the township, in spite of all the efforts of the farmers, hired men, and boys in the vicinity to drive them out. There, also, on the slope south of the house, were fully half a hundred Robins pluming themselves, shaking their feathers out to dry, and acting in every way like travellers pausing on a journey, rather than residents going out for a stroll. Tommy had paused to look at them, balancing the pail carefully as he did so, and then the sight of the birds reminded him that it was the day to go up to “the General’s,” and he hurried in to eat his breakfast and finish the Saturday morning “chores” that he always did for his mother. Then he went to the shed to look over the collection of bits of old wood that he had both begged and gathered far and near for the making of bird-houses. A neighbour, who was re-covering his cowshed roof with galvanized iron, had let Tommy pick up as many mossy shingles as he could carry, and some of these were really beautiful with tufts of gray lichens, some with bright red tips, blending with mosses of many soft shades of green.