September slipped by into a gold and crimson graciousness of October.  One Friday evening Diana came over.

“I’d a letter from Ella Kimball today, Anne, and she wants us to go over to tea tomorrow afternoon to meet her cousin, Irene Trent, from town.  But we can’t get one of our horses to go, for they’ll all be in use tomorrow, and your pony is lame . . . so I suppose we can’t go.”

“Why can’t we walk?” suggested Anne.  “If we go straight back through the woods we’ll strike the West Grafton road not far from the Kimball place.  I was through that way last winter and I know the road.  It’s no more than four miles and we won’t have to walk home, for Oliver Kimball will be sure to drive us.  He’ll be only too glad of the excuse, for he goes to see Carrie Sloane and they say his father will hardly ever let him have a horse.”

It was accordingly arranged that they should walk, and the following afternoon they set out, going by way of Lover’s Lane to the back of the Cuthbert farm, where they found a road leading into the heart of acres of glimmering beech and maple woods, which were all in a wondrous glow of flame and gold, lying in a great purple stillness and peace.

“It’s as if the year were kneeling to pray in a vast cathedral full of mellow stained light, isn’t it?” said Anne dreamily.  “It doesn’t seem right to hurry through it, does it?  It seems irreverent, like running in a church.”

“We must hurry though,” said Diana, glancing at her watch.  “We’ve left ourselves little enough time as it is.”

“Well, I’ll walk fast but don’t ask me to talk,” said Anne, quickening her pace.  “I just want to drink the day’s loveliness in . . .  I feel as if she were holding it out to my lips like a cup of airy wine and I’ll take a sip at every step.”

Perhaps it was because she was so absorbed in “drinking it in” that Anne took the left turning when they came to a fork in the road.  She should have taken the right, but ever afterward she counted it the most fortunate mistake of her life.  They came out finally to a lonely, grassy road, with nothing in sight along it but ranks of spruce saplings.

“Why, where are we?” exclaimed Diana in bewilderment.  “This isn’t the West Grafton road.”

“No, it’s the base line road in Middle Grafton,” said Anne, rather shamefacedly.  “I must have taken the wrong turning at the fork.  I don’t know where we are exactly, but we must be all of three miles from Kimballs’ still.”

“Then we can’t get there by five, for it’s half past four now,” said Diana, with a despairing look at her watch.  “We’ll arrive after they have had their tea, and they’ll have all the bother of getting ours over again.”

“We’d better turn back and go home,” suggested Anne humbly.  But Diana, after consideration, vetoed this.

“No, we may as well go and spend the evening, since we have come this far.”

A few yards further on the girls came to a place where the road forked again.