The way led first down the high road, bordered with gardens and farms and the houses of the village—if village it were called, where the neighbours looked at each other's distant windows across wide tracts of meadow, orchards and grain fields. The road was reasonably dusty, in the warm droughts of September; nevertheless the hedgerows that grew thick in many places shewed gay tufts of autumn flowering; and the mellow light lay on every wayside object and sober distance like the reflection from a butterfly's wing. Except the light, all changed when they got into the woody road.
It was woody indeed!—except where it was grassy; and woods and grass played hide and seek with each other. The grass-grown road, its thicker grass borders—where bright fall flowers raised their proud little heads; the old fence, broken down in places, where bushes burst through and half filled the gap; bright hips on the wild rosebushes, tufts of yellow fern leaves, brilliant handfuls of red and yellow which here a maple and there a pepperidge held out over the road; the bushy, bosquey, look which the uncut undergrowth gave the wood on either hand; the gleams of soft green light, the bands of shadow, the deeper thickets where the eye looked twice and came back unsatisfied,—over all the blue sky, with forest leaves for a border. Such was the woody road that afternoon. Flocks of little birds of passage flitted and twittered about their night's lodging, or came down to feast on wintergreen or cedar berries; and Mrs. Derrick's old horse walked softly on, as if he knew no one was in a hurry.
"'With what a glory comes and goes the year'!" Mr. Linden said.
"And stays all the while, don't it?" said Faith rather timidly and after an instant's hesitation.
"Yes, in a sort—though to my fancy the other seasons have rather beauty and splendour, while autumn keeps the glory for itself."
"I think it is glorious all the year round," said Faith;—"though to be sure," she added with a sudden check, "perhaps I don't use the word right."
"Yes, it is glorious,—but I think 'glorious' and 'glory' have drifted a little apart upon the tide of human speech. Glory, always seems to my mind a warm, glowing, effulgent thing,—but ice-peaks may be glorious. The old painters encircled the heads of their saints with a 'glory' and you could not imagine that a cold light."
Faith listened, with the eyes of one first seeing into the world of wonder and beauty hidden from common vision. She did not answer, till her thoughts came back to the road they were travelling, and catching her breath a little she said,
"This isn't a cold light."
"No, truly. And just so far as the saints on earth walk in a cold light, so far, I think, their light is less glorious."