The wind went down with the sun, and the willow and maple leaves were green again for a little before they faded into the growing purple of the dusk, but with every faint sigh of the failing breeze the poplars loomed white again with a radiant ghostliness which seemed to people the rustling dusk with softly phosphorescent spooks. You will see these other-world visitors to the pond shore only on such a night when the wind is right. There was no glow of rich color in the sky at sunset. Instead the dusk hung violet gray draperies all about the horizon,--curtains that veiled but did not hide the evening stars, shutting them almost out near the horizon and leaving them comparatively clear at the zenith. In such dusk stars do not twinkle, they blink, and that is a sign of rain which all the pasture people that have eyes know well. Those that have ears and no eyes may know what sort of a night it is as well, for there is some quality in such an atmosphere which makes sounds carry far. The rap of a paddle on a canoe seat a mile away up the pond sounds right in your ear. A train roaring through the wood three miles distant seems so near that you involuntarily look around lest it be coming behind and run over you. On such nights speak low if you do not wish the whole world to hear, for the air all about you is a wireless telephone receiver tuned to your pitch. Those gray rain curtains which the dusk has hung all about the horizon have made the whole world a whispering gallery. Sometime in the night the wind dies. It passes away so peacefully that no mirror held to its lips would note that last sigh. But the stars have known it all the evening, and that is why their eyes blinked so. It was to keep back the tears. Then the stars vanish and the night is dark indeed. Scents carry far on such a night, not only those of the pasture world, which are pleasant, but those of the more distant town, which sometimes are not. The air is not only telephonic but telefumic. The distant leather factory sends out a faint but characteristic odor by which you might hunt it across country for a lustrum of miles. The sooty emanation from my neighbors’ chimneys is pungent in my nostrils, though their houses are a mile away. I think I can tell which is which, for the fireplace smell differs from that of the furnace, as does that of the parlor stove from the range. Agreeably these are forgotten, for something has crushed sassafras leaves over on the pasture knoll and the fine fragrance comes to drive away thoughts of the others.