Another Winter, Thursday, October 7th
When the rain had gone over, in the late afternoon, and the clouds were lifted and drifted a little, we saw that there was snow on all the near mountains, through the pines, upon the pastures.
The cold wet street was full of excited swallows. Here was the cold. The cold was come too soon. They never yet had gone south so early.
Dear me, dear me—where would they stop the night?
Up under all the old shaggy rusty eaves, that reach out over the narrow streets, hundreds and hundreds of swallows were crowding each other in and out of sheltered places, such a fluttering and twittering. Under thatch and tiles, along the ledges of fine proud old stone windows, and of wine-red wooden balconies, they pushed and crowded each other, and in and out of the brown clayey nests that summer had abandoned.
People in the streets stopped to watch, laughing a little.
People in the cold, wet streets stopped to watch the swallows, women and old people and children.
"They have seen the snow on the mountains," said the people to one another, laughing a little.
And then always, every one said, each to the other, the same thing.
The one thought of all of them together, "Another winter."