A wind has risen, and has pulled aside the steel-colored cloud-curtain, and let heaven's eyes--blue, though faint and watery--look through.

And there comes another strong puff of autumnal wind, and lo! the sun, and the leaves float down in a sudden shower of amber in his light.

I march along quickly and gravely through the long drooped grass--no longer sweet and fresh and upright, in its green summer coat--through the frost-seared pomp of the bronze bracken, till I reach a little knoll, whose head is crowned by twelve great brother beeches.

From time immemorial they have been called the Twelve Apostles, and under one apostle I now stand, with my back against his smooth and stalwart trunk.
How _beaming_ is death to them! Into what a glorious crimson they decline! My eyes travel from one tree-group to another, and idly consider the many-colored majesty of their decay.

Over all the landscape there is a look of plaintive uncontent.