In the silence had been a vast, holy mystery of greater purpose and life; in the stillness was a menace.  It became the instant of poise before the break of something gigantic.

And always across it were rising strange rustlings that might mean great things or little, but whose significance was always in doubt.  Suddenly the man watching by the runway would hear a mighty scurrying of dead leaves, a scampering, a tumult of hurrying noises, the abruptness of whose inception tightened his nerves and set galloping his heart.  Then, with equal abruptness, they ceased.  The delicate and fragile stillness settled down.

In all the forest thus diverse affairs seemed to be carried on—­fearfully, in sudden, noisy dashes, as a man under fire would dodge from one cover to another.  Every creature advertised in the leaves his presence.  Danger lurked to this, its advantage.  Even the man, taking his necessary footsteps, was abashed at the disproportionate and unusual effects of his movements.  It was as though a retiring nature were to be accompanied at every step through a crowded drawing-room by the jingling of bells.  Always the instinct was to pause in order that the row might die away, that the man might shrink to his accustomed unobtrusiveness.  And instantaneously, without the grace of even a little transitional echo, the stillness fell, crowding so closely on the heels of the man’s presence that almost he could feel the breath of whatever it represented.

Occasionally two red squirrels would descend from the spruce-trees to chase each other madly.  Then, indeed, did the spirit of autumn seem to be outraged.  The racket came to be an insult.  Always the ear expected its discontinuance, until finally the persistence ground on the nerves like the barking of a dog at night.  At last it was an indecency, an orgy of unholy revel, a profanation, a provocative to anger of the inscrutable woods god.  Then stillness again with the abruptness of a sword-cut.

Always the forest seemed to be the same; and yet somehow in a manner not to be defined a subtle change was taking place in the wilderness.  Nothing definite could be instanced.  Each morning of that Indian summer the skies were as soft, the sun as grateful, the leaves as gorgeous in their blazonment, yet each morning an infinitesimal something that had been there the day before was lacking, and for it an infinitesimal something had been substituted.  The change from hour to hour was not perceptible; from week to week it was.  The stillness grew in portent; the forest creatures moved more furtively.  Like growth, rather than chemical change; the wilderness was turning to iron.  With this hardening it became more formidable and menacing.  No longer aloof in nirvanic calm, awakened it drew near its enemies, alert, cunning, circumspect, ready to strike.

Each morning a thin film of ice was to be seen along the edges of the slack water.  Heavy, black frosts whitened the shadows and nipped the unaccustomed fingers early in the day.  The sun was swinging to the south, lengthening the night hours.  Whitefish were running in the river.