Upon the hills were set the blood-red seals of the frost. Every maple, robed in glory, had taken on the garments of royalty. The air shimmered with the amethystine haze of Indian Summer, that veil of luminous mist, vibrant with colour, which Autumn weaves on her loom. Margaret went out, leaving the door ajar for Lynn. There were few keys in East Lancaster. A locked door was discourteous--a reflection upon the integrity of one's neighbours. From the elms the yellow leaves were dropping, like telegrams from the high places, saying that Summer had gone. She turned at the corner and went east, the long light throwing her shadow well before her. "It is like Life," she mused, smiling; "we go through it, following shadows--things that vanish when there is a shifting of the light." Across the clover fields, where the dried blossoms stirred in their sleep as she passed, through the upland pastures, stony and barren, with the pools overgrown, through a fallow field, shorn of its harvest, where only the tiny lace-makers spread their webs amidst the stubble, Margaret's way was all familiar, and yet sadly changed. A meadow-lark, the last one of his kind, winged a leisurely way southward, singing as he flew. A squirrel flaunted his bushy tail, gave her a daring backward glance, and scurried up a tree. She laughed, and paused at the entrance to the forest. Once she had stood there, thrilled to her inmost soul. Again she had waited there, white to the lips with pain. Now she had outgrown it, had learned peace, and the long years slipped away, each with its own burden. The wood was exquisitely still. A nut dropped now and then, and a belated bird called to its mate. The swift patter of fairy feet echoed and re-echoed through the long aisles. The air was crystalline, yet full of colour, and the gold and crimson leaves floated idly back and forth. It needed only a passing wind, at the right moment and from the right place, to make a rainbow then and there. She went farther into the wood, with a sense of friendliness for the well-known way. Just at the turn of the path, she stopped, amazed. At their trysting-place, where the wide rock was laid at the foot of the oak, someone had reared an altar and blazoned a cross upon the stone. Her eyes filled, for she knew who had made it, that symbol of sacrifice. Weather-worn and moss-grown, it must have stood for the whole of the five and twenty years. There was no word, no inscription--only the cross, but for her it was enough. "To kiss the cross, Sweetheart, to kiss the cross!" The last measures of the song reverberated through her memory, as Iris had sung it in her deep contralto, so long ago. Sobbing, she knelt, with her lips against the symbol, then suddenly started to her feet, for there was a step upon the path. For a blinding instant, they faced each other, unbelieving, then the Master opened his arms. "Beloved," he breathed, "is it thou?" XX "Mine Brudder's Friend"