Across the wild northern hills comes the winter wind, painting the leaf and foliage dun and red, as age brings chrome and artificial scarlet to the cheeks of the decayed beauty. The skies are leaden, every rainy gust sweeps the skeleton branches cleaner, spreading on valley path and craggy niche a Turkey carpet. The airs, acrid with frost and aromatic from the sting of wood-smoke, freeze the new-pressed cider in the half-buried hogshead.

Along the stormy and rockbound coast, through the woods of New England, the Yankees settle themselves for the rigours of winter, prepare to face the months of isolation when roads will be impassable, consoled with a fresh supply of applejack and illustrated catalogues. On the Boston Common moochers assure one another that "Rosafult" will not let them starve. In Cambridge there are hour examinations.

But before winter comes the Vagabond will do one thing. Some day, soon the sky will clear and shine with a glowing, enchanting blue. The leaves will crackle under foot, and the dying plant life glimmer deceptively gold and crimson in the sun, as with a vernal life and freshness. The tang in the air will stimulate the will to live, when old men will feel young and explain "Indian summer." Then the Vagabond will take to Nature a bottle of sweet wine, and bread and cheese, and her, to make one more memory against the icy death of winter.