“Waal, hev it so,—hev it so.” Longwood waved off the discussion. “Look out right smart enny clear night, an’ ye’ll see the man in the moon wadin’ down in them shallows.” “Shucks!” said Isabel, discarding the consideration, as it were, of the man in the moon, and thinking that Longwood was disposed to talk to her as if she were a very small child. He sat quite silent then, the light wind blowing his long hair back amongst the sere and yellow vines. There was no serenity, as of yore, in his eyes, and Marcella was moved to vaguely pity him. She glanced down at him once or twice as she spun, and then away to the purple mountains beyond the hazy valley, rich with golden drapings, tissues of the sunshine that seemed some splendid textile thing, so palpable was its effect. The lilac aster trembled in the stir of the wind. The wild turkey called from the woods. All the burrs of the great chestnut by the gate had opened to the summons of the frost, and now and again as the branches shook, the glossy nuts fell to the roots of the tree. She saw adown the moist, dank path a garter-snake, lying, half torpid, lured out by the treacherous sun and chilled by the autumn blast. Somewhere a cricket shrilled and shrilled. “Air the season for’ard over ter Chilhowee, Andy?” she asked. “Dunno. Don’t keer. Wisht Chilhowee war leveled with the ground.” “Dell-law!” exclaimed Isabel, astonished by this ebullition of perversity, and disposed to comment profusely. Mrs. Strobe, however, opportunely called her from within to some domestic duty, and the suffering Longwood felt it a release. “Marcelly,” he said earnestly, making the most of his opportunity, “ye an’ me useter be powerful friendly, an’ I hed ruther kem hyar a-visitin’ than in the courts o’ heaven. An’ ye useter laff an’ be glad ter see me. An’ me an’ ye, an’ sometimes Is’bel,”—alas, how often Isabel, for all he put it thus politely,—“useter sit in the orcherd an’ eat apples, an’ go fishin’, an’ sometimes jes’ talk on the porch; an’ now all them times air gone!” “Ain’t we talkin’ on the porch now?” demanded Marcella.