The sunshine was still, languid; the air was calm, Wild-Cat Hollow wore its wintry aspect, although below in the cove one might have glimpses of red and yellow, as if the autumn yet lingered. Everywhere there was a wider outlook because of the denudation of the woods, and the landscape was the more gaunt, the more rugged. It was like a mind stripped of the illusions of youth; the stern facts are the plainer, and alas! more stern. The purplish-garnet hue of the myriads of bare boughs in the forests covering the mountain slopes contrasted with the indeterminate blue of the sky. There was a fibrous effect in their fine detail; even the great mass, seen at a distance, was like some delicate penciling. Singularly still it was, the air very dry; the dead leaves on the ground did not rustle; the corn-stalks, standing withered and yellow in the fields, did not stir. The only motion was the slow shifting of the shadows as the day went on, and perhaps high, high even above the Great Smoky, a swift passing of wild geese flying southward, their cabalistic syllable _Houk! houk!_ floating down, seeming in the silence strangely intoned and mysterious. At night a new moon looked through the rigid, naked trees. The feeble glimmer from the little log cabin was solitary. The stars themselves were hardly more aloof from the world. The narrow vista through the gap only attested how darkly indistinguishable was the cove, how annihilated in the blackness were the mountains. No sound of cattle drifted down now from the bald; the herds were gone; sometimes in the midnight the howl of a wolf echoed and re-echoed in all the tortuous ways of the wilderness; then silence, that seemed to tremble with fear of the reiteration of the savage cry. Alethea was prone to be wakeful and sad and anxious, so perhaps it was well that she had much to occupy her thoughts during the day. The baby fretted for his mother. Mrs. Jessup was not a model mother, but she was the only one the baby had, and he was not recreant to filial sentiment. He exacted a vast number of petty attentions from Alethea which he had never before required. Tige and the cub resented the pampering she gave him; they were jealous and made their feeling known in many dumb manifestations: they kept themselves sadly in the way; now they were hungry and now they were thirsty, and they whined continually about her. She hardly noticed at first that a thick haze had appeared over the cove, but as yet did not dim the sky. It climbed the mountain sides, and hung like a gauze veil about the cabin and the sheds. Suddenly she became aware of the pungent odor of smoke. She put the child away from her, as he clung to her skirts, and stepped out upon the porch. The dog and cub pressed close after her, fancying that they had scored one against the baby, who had sunk, squalling because of his desertion, upon the floor. She looked about for a moment at the still white presence that had usurped the earth, the air, the sky.