It was a warm, sunny day in October and the leaves were just beginning to turn. As they climbed the hill above Meadow Brook and came within sight of the valley, great splashes of crimson flung out like banners across the valley and yellow glinted across the purples and browns like patches of gold in the sunshine. There was a smell of burning leaves and sunshine in the air and the earth was sweet with autumn. Blue and yellow and white asters bordered the road that wound along the hill and dipped again into the valley among the trees. Purple grackles were stalking the fields in battalions, their stiff, black silk armor glinting in the sun, cawing of the weather and their coming need of flight. She could hear their hoarse, throaty voices as she lay and stared at the ceiling in her little lonely house under the maples. And the air! How sweet and winey it had been! She and Aunt Mary had climbed a fence and crossed a field till they reached the deep, sweet woods with its solemn cathedral silences and its lofty vaulted ceiling. How far away the world had seemed as they entered and trod the pine-strewn aisles and penetrated deep into the cloistered vistas. She remembered thinking that this must be where God stayed a good deal, it was so sweet and perfect. Above in the branches strange birds sent out wild, sweet notes, like snatches of celestial anthems. Favored birds to live in such safe and holy fastnesses. She remembered wondering if they ever flew down to Meadow Brook and fellowed with the common birds, picking up worms in garden paths, and draggling their feathers in the dust of the world like sparrows, or did they always stay here alone with God and praise? They had found a mossy log to sit upon and a carpet of pine needles fragrant and deep, and there they had established themselves, the little girl lying full length upon the sweet bed of needles, the older woman sitting upon the log and reading. It was a story book they were reading, one of Louisa Alcott’s, was it “Under the Lilacs” or “Little Women”? “Under the Lilacs” of course, because it was where the little white circus dog Sancho appeared that she remembered first noticing the boy’s back.