On the ledge of the chimney, where the level rays came warmest, and stone and tile radiated heat, the last lingering swallows twittered a long farewell. For the oxen had already felt the drag of the heavy plough. The ivy flowered on the wall, blossoming for winter, and there was a buzz of flies gathering on the pane towards the sun. As a ripe pear that waited but the rude shock of the wind, the full year was bending to its fall. Overhead the rooks were floating idly home down towards Thorpe Wood. The long files of the black army streaked the sky with streaming thousands far as the eye could see, and filled the air with the strange rush and creaking of their wings and the goblin chuckle of the noisy jackdaws. The feathery heads of the reeds by the mill-pool bowed mournfully; and in the hush of the dying day came the monotonous chaunt of the mill-wheel, ever round and round, without haste and without rest; and with it mingled the sounding rush of the race, of its foam and bubble and spray as of human life. The sunbeam on the chamber-wall--stained azure and purple by the painted escutcheon of "Fischere" on the pane--travelled slowly as the sun sank lower. There was a picture almost opposite the beehive chair--a picture old and darkened by the thickening of the oil and varnish. It was the portrait by a rude hand of a sturdy boy in breeches and buckles, and with bare head, fishing in the brook. The portrait was that of Andrew himself in his boyhood, painted to please a doting mother. Was there a tear in his dull eyeball at the thought of her--heartbroken by his evil so many, many weary years ago? Was he wiser, happier, now in the fullness of his days, than when, with peeled white willow wand, a thread and crooked pin, he angled in the bend of the brook where the eddy scooped out a deeper hollow? "Caer-wit! caer-weet!" It was the call of the partridge yonder, in the mead at the foot of the hill; and a distant answer came from the stubble lower down. Ah, the joy of the brown twist barrel and the eager dogs. His sight is dull and sinews stiff; never again will Andrew Fisher mark a covey down as they skim across the uplands. The blue-stained sunbeam moved onward, the sun declined, and the wearyful women came homeward from the gleaning and the labour of the field. Their path passed close beneath the great window, and their stooping shadows for a moment shut out the sunshine. Such paths used by the workers, and going right through the grounds of the house, may be found still, where the ancient usage has not yet succumbed to modern privacy, and were once the general custom. It was the season of the harvest, the time of joy and gladness. Do you suppose these women moved in rhythmic measures to Bacchanalian song and pastoral pipe, as the women came home from the field with corn and grape: In Tempe and the dales of Arcady?