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As we turn the ancient, worm-eaten page which preserves the simple record of his fortunes, a wild and dreary scene rises before the mind, a chill November air, a murky sky, a cold lake, bare and shivering forests, the earth strewn with crisp brown leaves, and, by the water-side, the bark sheds and smoking camp-fires of a band of Indian hunters. Champlain was of the party.

The air, crisp and cold, had a strange nectar in it and its very breath was life. The sun lay in the heavens a ball of gold, and a fine haze, like a misty golden veil, hung over the forest. It was Indian summer. Then Indian summer passed and winter, which was very early that year, came roaring down on Wareville. The autumn broke up in a cold rain which soon turned to snow.

In their exaltation it did not occur to either of them what a strange place this little schoolhouse was for such a far-reaching compact. Out under the coruscating skies again, into the crisp air! Bradley turned and looked back upon the little schoolhouse, packed to suffocation; it would always remain a memorable place in this wide land. "Oh, you've done them good more than you can tell!" Ida said.

But she could not have made much noise, for still there was no sign from the study. She scarcely paused to breathe. A latchkey closed the door behind her very softly; she was in the crisp, clean air at last. But it was no hour for finding cabs; it was the hour of the scavenger and no other being; and Rachel walked into broad sunlight before she spied a solitary hansom.

Crisp, Lloyd recalled the forlorn little woman in a wispy crêpe veil, who had enlisted her sympathy to such an extent one Thanksgiving Day that she and Betty had walked over to Rollington from the Seminary to carry the greater part of the turkey and fruit that had been sent them in their box of Thanksgiving goodies.

"`Us! then you're the idiot who wrote about the Swallows! said I. "`Suppose I am, said he, blushing all over, `suppose I am. "`Well, all I can say is, I'm precious glad the little Crisp isn't guilty of it. "Two of ye do not a summer make," indeed! "`Well, they don't, said he. "`I know they don't, said I, half dead with laughing, `but you needn't go and tell everybody.

On the marble table beside Andrews were some pieces of crisp bread with butter on them, a saucer of damson jam and a bowl with coffee and hot milk from which the steam rose in a faint spiral.

The tall elms overhead just bursting into tender vivid leaf, with here and there a hoary oak or a silver-barked beech, every twig swelling with the brown buds, and yet not quite stripped of the tawny foliage of autumn; tall hollies and hawthorn beneath, with their crisp brilliant leaves mixed with the white blossoms of the sloe, and woven together with garlands of woodbines and wild-briers; what a fairy land!

I missed any system of cleaning boots during the night, in the hotels; but I soon became accustomed to this, and rather enjoyed visiting the "shine parlours," in one of which was this crisp notice: "If you like our work, tell your friends; if you don't like it, tell us." I missed gum-chewing. But it was on returning to England that I began really to take notice.

"And to think," Prime remarked, "that the coldest thing he can get on this train is ginger ale." Kemp, coming back with a golden bottle, with cracked ice in a tall glass, with a crisp curl of lemon peel, ready for an innocuous libation, brought his nose down from the heights to look for the foot, found that it no longer barred the way, and marched on to hidden music.