And then there’s Kirby Corners, a mere stroll of a few minutes round the square of a rock-bound pasture--just enough to give yourself time to think a bit and congratulate yourself on what you have escaped. All these, and several more, are vivid in my memory; friends, old and intimate. And here’s another, right before us by the roadside. For several minutes through the tantalizing trees we have heard its rumbling wheel, its reiterating clank, and busy saw; and now, as its familiar outline looms up against the evening sky, the vision seems to darken, as on that night of long ago, when through the shadowy mystery of the moonlit gloom I stole my way among the sheltering golden-rod; when the lofty flume, like a huge horned creature, seemed to stride athwart me in the darkness, and the fitful boyish fancy saw strange phantoms in the floating, melting mist. This ancient structure reposes in a verdant dell at the foot of Snug Hamlet Hill. A choice of two roads lies before us--one short and direct, the other a roundabout approach. A sudden impulse leads me into the latter. On right and left I see the same old rocks and trees. There stands the aged beech to whose gnarled and hollow trunk I traced the agile flying-squirrel, and with suffocating flame and smoke drove him from his hiding-place. Here between large rocks and stones the trout-stream runs its course, now pouring in small cataracts, now eddying into still, dark nooks, where in those by-gone times I dropped the line of expectancy, but showed the clumsiness of adversity. A few minutes later, and we are gliding again by the dark Shepaug, now flowing calm and silent beneath a rugged bank, wild and umbrageous, where the swarm of katydids, with grating discord, maintain their old dispute, that never-ending feud. The wheels turn noiselessly in the shifting sand as we pursue our way. The low gray fog steals lightly over the lily-pads, floating into seclusion beneath the sheltering boughs, or, like an evanescent spirit, borne upon the evening breath, is lifted from the gloom, and slowly melts into the twilight sky. The solitary whippoorwill from his mysterious haunt, perhaps in yonder tree, perhaps in the mountain loneliness beyond, proclaims with dismal cry his oft-repeated wail. And as we ascend the darkening path, through the still night air, in measured cadence long and sad, we hear the toll of the distant knell. Threescore-and-ten its numbers tell of the earthly years--a curfew requiem for the dead. Even as we pass the little chapel at the summit of the hill, and the bell has scarcely ceased its melancholy tidings, we hear the shouts and merry laughs of the boys on the village green. Presently its broad expanse, shut in by twinkling windows and massive trees, spreads out before us, as a clear and ringing voice, like that of old, echoes through the growing darkness, “One hundred! Nothing said, coming ahead!” and a dim figure steals cautiously