Armies of wild-fowl, however, came to us on the great Vlaie; duck and geese and companies of snowy swans; and at night I could hear their fairy trumpets in the sky heralding the white onset from the North. And pigeons came to the beech-woods, millions and millions, so that their flight was a windy roaring in the sky and darkened the sun. Birches and elms and chestnuts and soft maples turned yellow; and so turned the ghostly tamaracks ere their needles fell. Hard maples and oaks grew crimson and scarlet and the blueberry bushes and sumachs glowed like piles of fire. But the world of pines darkened to a deeper emerald; spruce and hemlock took on a more sober hue; and the flowing splendour of the evergreens now robed plain and mountain in sombre magnificence, dully brocaded here and there by an embroidery of silver balsam. When I was strong enough to trail a rifle and walk my post on the veranda roof, my Saguenay Indian took to the Drowned Lands, scouting the meshed water-leads like a crested diving-duck; and his canoe nosed into every creek from Mayfield to Fish House. Nick foraged, netting pigeons on the Stacking Ridge, shooting partridge, turkey, and squirrel as our need prompted, or dropping a fat doe at evening on the clearing's edge beyond Howell's house. Of fish we had our fill,--chain-pike and silver-pike from Vlaie Water; trout out of Hans Creek and Frenchman's Creek. Corn, milled grain, and pork we drew a-horse from Johnstown or Mayfield; we had milk and butter of our own cows, and roasting ears and potatoes, squash, beets, and beans, and a good pumpkin for our pies, all from Summer House garden. And a great store of apples--for it was a year for that fruit--and we had so many that Nick pitted scores of bushels; and we used them to eat, also, and to cook. Now, against first frost, Penelope had sewed for us sacks out o' tow cloth; and when frost came to moss the world with spongy silver, we went after nuts, Nick and I,--chestnuts from the Stacking Ridge, and gathered beechnuts there, also. Butternuts we found, sticky and a-plenty, along the Sacandaga; and hickory nuts on every ridge, and hazel filberts bordering clearing and windfall in low, moist woods. Sure we were well garnered if not well garrisoned at Summer House when the first snow flakes came a-drifting like errant feathers floating from a wild-fowl shot in mid-air. The painted leaves dropped in November, settling earthward through still sunshine in gold and crimson clouds. "Mother Earth hath put on war-paint," quoth Penelope, knitting. She spoke to Nick, turning her head slightly. She spoke chiefly to him in these days, I having become, as I have said, a silent ass; and so strange and of so infrequent speech that they did not even venture to remark to me my reticence; and I think they thought my hurt had changed me in my mind and nature. Yet I was but a simple ass, differing only from other asses in that they brayed more frequently than I.