Nature works deftly, at first with delicate brush touching a shadbush, a clump of osmunda, or again only a leaf, a spot of color, a patch here and a streak there; but the day of transfiguration approaches. Early October sees the stag-horn sumacs fairly scintillate with color. At last the whole color-box is upset and runs red down a hillside huckleberry patch, meeting a yellow streak in a ravine and spreading out over the swamps, a sea of scarlet and gold. Every year Nature starts out in this modest fashion and ends in an upset and riot of color. We should know her ways by this time, but though her plan is the same she varies the details infinitely and there are always surprises. These same earth-fires which blazed in the osmunda now glow deep red in the dwarf sumacs--a dull, fierce flame, as if for the nonce Pluto's fires shone through the thin shell of earth. The poison-ivy is in its glory, and no tupelo, no sugar-maple, can rival its scarlet and vermilion. Earth indeed wears a jewel now. But there is nowhere a warmer, mellower tint than the shadbush has caught and held,--not brilliant nor showy, not a shining mark in the woods, but a cheery sight that warms the cockles of your heart. Little clumps of the maple-leaved viburnum are now of a delicate smoky pink, while the ash turns an indescribable hue--a greenish maroon or purplish green if such there be. Already the hickory leaves are falling, detaching themselves one by one and floating leisurely to earth. It will now be our gentle pleasure to walk through crisp and rustling leaves. Barberries are ripe, and old-fashioned folk gather them for jelly or preserve them in molasses, wherein they are as so many shoe-pegs drowned in sweetness. The solitary sandpiper comes again to preside briefly over the ponds--a lone, wild spirit. Little flocks of coots scud low over the water, and in the dark, spongy humus of the hemlock swamp, red squirrels are digging caches and concealing the small cones, a dozen or more in a place. Such are the signs of the times. Yet another sign--the last effort of the dying year--is the witch-hazel, which sheds its leaves and stands arrayed in yellow blossoms. A brave suggestion is this flower of the late autumn, blossoming when all else is in the sear and yellow, that it may bear seed in another year. When all others have given up and are retreating, this one comes forth as much as to say it is never too late. There is a very witchery in the crinkled yellow flower born of the old year in a frosty world; a borean child brought hither on the wings of the North wind; a sturdy blossom that will not show itself till it hears the music of rustling leaves.