As the weeks rolled on the days began perceptibly to draw in, and the leaves turned gradually from green to golden brown.  It was the fall of the year, when the wind acquires an edge, and blue sky disappears behind purple clouds, and the world is reminded that ere very long all nature will be wrapped in a shroud of grey and silver.  Rain fell with greater frequency, the uplands were often veiled in a damp mist, the hours of basking in noontide suns by the old stone fountain were gone, and Austin was fain to relinquish, one by one, those summer fantasies that for so many happy months had made the gladness of his life.  There is always something sad about the autumn.  It is associated, undeniably, with golden harvests and purple vintages, the crimson and yellow magnificence of foliage, and a few gorgeous blooms; but these, after all, are no more than indications that the glory of the year has reached its zenith, that its labours have attained fruition, and that the death of winter must be passed through before the resurrection-time of spring.

    “Ihr Matten lebt wohl,
        Ihr sonnigen Waiden,
        Der Senne muss scheiden,
    Die Sommer ist bin.”

And yet the summer did not carry everything away with it.  As the year ripened and decayed, other fantasies arose to take the place of those he was losing—­or rather, he grew more and more under the obsession of ideas not wholly of this world, ideas and phases of consciousness that, as we have seen, had for some time past been gradually gaining an entrance into his soul.  As the beauties of the material world faded, the wonders of a higher world superseded them.  He still lived much in the open air, drinking in all the influences of the scenery in earth and sky, and marvelling at the loveliness of the year’s decadence; but, as though in subtle sympathy with nature’s phases, it seemed to him as though his own body had less vitality, and that, while his mind was as keen and vigorous as ever, he felt less and less inclined to explore his beloved, fields and woods.  Aunt Charlotte looked first critically and then anxiously at his face, which appeared to her paler and thinner than before.  His stump began to trouble him again, and once or twice he confessed, in a reluctant sort of way, that his back did not feel quite comfortable.  Of course he thought it was very silly of his back, and was annoyed that it did not behave more sensibly.  But he didn’t let it trouble him over-much, for he was always very philosophical about pain.  Once, when he had a toothache, somebody expressed surprise that he bore it with such stoicism, and asked him jokingly for the secret.  “Oh,” he replied, “I just fix my attention on my great toe, or any other part of my body, and think how nice it is that I haven’t got a toothache there.”