It was late autumn. Between the tree-tops were skyey lakes of blue more brilliant than any blue of summer sky, more evanescent than any of spring. The sun shone through the tree-tops with an ineffable, clear, cold light, displaying every fibre in their leaves and imparting to them a fragility wholly sad.
A light uncertain wind rippled through the sumachs, giving their leaves a delicate, lateral movement, as though upon some aerial lyre they harped their own requiem, touching its invisible strings lightly with blood-tipped fingers, for the autumn coloring stained the green.
Between the boughs of the trees glistened those huge octagonal webs that the wood-spiders spin so persistently at this season. There was no sound of birds, only the cheerless shrilling of the autumnal crickets and the dry rustle of dead leaves as the few grasshoppers left alive hopped torpidly from place to place till they came to the spot to die.
The katydids, that six weeks before had prophesied so cheerily the frost that was to kill them, lay here and there, little pale-green corpses, wrapped in their lace-like wings.
The tall weeds by the pathway, that in summer had disguised themselves with blossoms of different colors and shapes, now stood confessed, with panicles of burs crowning their dishonored heads.
It was upon such a day that Homer walked through his woods, searching for a young hickory tree suitable to cut down for axe-handles. His heart, caught in the embrace of the surrounding silence, suddenly stilled its throbbing to a steadier rhythm than it had known of late. He thought out clearly the motive that must actuate his life, the inspiration that must point his path.
Passion was indeed eliminated from his heart, but not forgotten. They tell us that when an arm or leg is amputated, one still feels shadowy aches and ghostly pangs, intensifying the desolate sense of incompleteness and loss. The maiming of one part of the body may preserve the whole alive, but yet one looks back with anguished regret to the days when he stood complete.
Homer Wilson was learning that each must "dree his ain weird," and the only complaint he made against his Fate was that he could not alter Myron's.
Night fell soon and swiftly now. The sun seemed glad to sink out of sight. Its feeble rays brought no heat to the leaves it had called to life. The sad silence of the trees seemed a mute reproach against the light that brought forth but could not sustain, their foliage.
That evening in the chill twilight, Homer overtook Myron and her boy returning from Mrs. Deans'. Slackening his pace, he walked with them to the village. The air was very quiet, "silent as a nun breathless with adoration." As they passed along the road there came an earthy breath from the fresh-turned soil in the fields, where they had been lifting the potatoes and the turnips. It had none of the fresh fruitiness of spring: instead it was redolent with sad suggestions, an atmosphere in which one involuntarily lowered the voice and stilled a laugh.