There are worse tales and more of them, but I fear that cold type chills out the subtle aroma of probability with which Jotham always manages to invest them. One needs to hear them told with the fragrance of a barn full of new-made hay in the nostrils, the swish of the northeaster to accompany the voice in his ears, and with his eye on the distant hillside pastures all hung with mysterious draperies of mist to make a proper background of quaint shadows of romance. Then he can really appreciate the folk lore that goes with us by the familiar title of "Jotham stories." CHAPTER XVII GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER I think the daintiest scent that can be found in the woodland in these last days of September is that of the coral-root flower, which looks like a wan, tan ghost of a blossom, but nevertheless is sweet and succulent. The plant is by no means common in my world. Many a year goes by without my seeing it at all. In autumn it grows from among dry pine leaves, a slender spike that has neither root leaves nor stem leaves, but looks like the dried flower scape of some spring blooming plant. So protective is its coloration that I stand among its blooms and look long before I see them at all. It is only by getting very close that one can see that the tiny forests scattered along the pale brown scape are themselves beautifully colored with purple and white on the same soft tan foundation as the scape. They have, too, the quaintly mysterious formation of all orchid blooms and that alluring, elusive odor which must be sought intimately to be known. You must get this dainty perfume where it grows. If you pluck the blooms and take them home they will hold their beauty and color for days, but the scent will have strangely slipped from them and trembled along the still, soft air back to the woodland haunts whence it came. You might find it there, wandering disconsolate in the lonely brown spaces seeking for its own heart of bloom, but from under your roof it has departed.