Grey Pine and Westways during the summer and fall of 1858 felt, like many in the Northern States, the need to live with economy.  Want of employment added to the unrest, and the idle men found time to discuss the angry politics which rang through the debates in the Senate.  The changed tariff on iron, to which Pennsylvania was always selfishly sensitive, affected the voting, and Penhallow was pleased when the Administration suffered disaster in the October elections.  All parties—­Republican, American and Douglas Democrats—­united to cast discredit on the President’s policy, but Penhallow knew that the change of duties on iron had little to do with the far-spread ruin of trade and manufactures the result of long credits and the careless finance of an over-prosperous people.  The electoral results were looked upon as a Republican victory.  He so explained it on a November afternoon, as he rode through the still forest with Leila Grey, when the faint haze and warmer days told of that mysterious arrest of decay we call the Indian summer.

As they rode, the long lapses into silence told of the pleasant relations of two people entirely at ease with one another.  Now it was a question asked—­and now quick discussion.  She had slowly won with maidenhood what few children have, more or less of the varied forms of imagination, which once had rather amused or puzzled her in John Penhallow.  Her uncle, who thought slowly unless in danger, rode on with his mind upon a small order for rails and was far from feeling the mystery of the autumn days.  The girl beside him was reading into the slow rocking to and fro of the falling leaves some reluctance to become forever a part of the decaying mould.

“Please, Uncle Jim, don’t trot.  Let them walk.  It is so full of tender deaths.”

“What do you mean, Leila?—­as if death were ever beautiful or tender.  You and your aunt bother me with your absurd manufacture of some relation to nature—­”

“Oh, Uncle Jim!  Once I saw you pat a big pine and say ’how are you, old fellow?’ I told John it was nonsense, but he said it was fine.”

“Oh, but that was a tree.”

Leila laughed.  “Of that there can be no doubt.”

“Well, and what of it?  It was half fun.  You and John and your aunt sit up and explode into enthusiasm over verse, when it could all be said far better in simple prose.”

“I should like to put that to the test some night.”

“Not I, Miss Grey.  I have no poetry in me.  I am cold prose through and through.”

“You—­you!” she cried.  “Some people like poetry—­some people are poetry.”

“What—­what?”

“Wasn’t your hero Cromwell just magnificent, stately blank verse?”

“What confounded nonsense!” She glanced at the manly figure with the cavalry seat, erect, handsome, to her heroic—­an ideal gentleman in all his ways.  “Stuff and nonsense!” he added.

“Well, Uncle Jim—­to talk prose—­the elections please you?”