These late August days are too often overfull, and one sees and hears too much,—so very much that it is hard to give proper heed to any one of the many sights and sounds. But how much harder to turn your back upon it! All too soon the sun sinks into the golden clouds of the western sky. That was a happy day when the buckwheat was threshed in the field, on a cool, clear, crisp October morning. The thumping of the Hails on the temporary floor put the world in good humor. No bird within hearing but sang to its time-keeping. Even the crows cawed more methodically, and squirrels barked at the same instant that the flail sent a shower of brown kernels dancing in the air. The quails came near, as if impatient for the grains eyes less sharp than theirs would fail to find. It was something at such a time to lie in the gathering heap of straw and join in the work so far as to look on. That is a boy’s privilege which we seldom are anxious to outgrow. A nooning at such a time meant a fire to warm the dinner, and the scanty time allowed was none too short for the threshers to indulge in weather prognostications. This is as much a habit as eating, and to forego it would be as unnatural as to forego the taking of food. As the threshers ate, they scanned the surroundings, and not a tree, bush, or wilted weed but was held to bear evidence that the coming winter would be “open” or “hard,” as the oldest man present saw fit to predict. No one disputed him, and no one remembered a week later what he had said, so the old man’s reputation was safe. The buckwheat threshed, the rest is all a matter of plain prose. Stay! In the coming Indian summer there was always a bee-hunt. The old man whom we saw in the buckwheat-field in October was our dependence for wild honey, which we fancied was better than that from the hives. He always went alone, carrying a wooden pail and a long, slender oaken staff. How he found the bee-trees so readily was a question much discussed. “He smells it,” some one suggested; “He hears ’em a-buzzin’,” others remarked. Knowing when he was going, I once followed on the sly and solved the mystery. He went without hesitation or turning of the head to a hollow beech, and straightway commenced operations. I did not stay to witness this, but came away recalling many a Sunday afternoon’s stroll with him in these same woods. What he had seen in August he had remembered in December, and, wise man that he was, said nothing meanwhile. Why, indeed, should he throw aside the opportunity to pose as one having superior knowledge, when others were so persistent in asserting it of him? There is that much vanity in all men.