Coretta, who knew of old that I rather liked sunsets, coming one day to borrow my last machine-needle, called my attention to an aggressively colored sky by saying it was like a pile of “greenlins an’ ’maters.” (Greenlands and tomatoes--yes.) I assented so readily that Coretta flushed with the success of her venture in poetics. When she was gone, I reflectively picked a letter from my batch of half-read mail. It began: “Your last filled me with a veritable nostalgia for your mountain. The odor of ripened grains and fruits and new-cut wood overcomes me whenever I think of it. I see great white clouds rearing their domes against a deep, blue sky; and at my feet gentians star my way to you.” I dropped the letter. Where was Autumn? How had I lost her? Like a spear-thrust the question kept recurring until the next day, when Aunt Janey Stiles came. IV Aunt Janey lived over the mountain on Juniper Creek, three miles west of me, and carried all her supplies on her shoulder from the village two miles to the east. On her way out she would take eggs, butter, chickens, beans--anything exchangeable at the village store--and on her way in would carry flour, coffee, sugar, salt, soda, and lard. She had done this for forty years, and looked wiry and tenacious enough to do it for forty more. She sometimes paused for half a day, and once spent the night with me; but, unlike the neighborly highlanders, would never turn a hand to help me. She watched me work as she might have attended a play, and this did not make for the smoothness of my operations; but I was always glad to see Aunt Janey. Her attainments did not include a knowledge of the alphabet, but her mind sometimes revealed a glitter that made me think her brown, withered body held an old-world spirit--Greek, perhaps--a Periclesian favorite. “I wasn’t meanin’ to stop,” she said, as her sack slid from her shoulders; “but seein’ the big kittle smokin’ in the yard, I ’lowed you’s makin’ apple butter, an’ I like to watch it poppin’. Don’t you quit stirrin’. I’ll fetch me a cheer from the kitchen. The sun’s as soft as an old blanket to-day.” She returned with the chair, and continued: “You’ve got to watch apple butter closer’n a creepin’ baby if anybody’s goin’ to _eat_ it.” Did she know that I had burned up one kettleful? Though I had tried to remove all trace of it, there might be a treacherous odor in the air. “That’s so, Aunt Janey,” I said; “but I’m going to take time to empty this anyway.” And I took up a tub of apple-parings. I could utilize those parings in three ways, and for that triple reason I wished them to disappear quickly. “They’re tellin’ all around that you’re powerful agin wastin’ stuff,” said Aunt Janey when I had returned, in a tone so intentionally colorless that I became suspicious and defensive.