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And whenever they sat under the well-remembered tree in the cool of the early fall evening, with the soft Virginia air fanning their cheeks, the red and golden hues of frost-touched leaves above them, he knew their talk was mostly of him, the absent one, most fondly loved. Tom looked up. He thought he had heard a groan, or something very similar, break from the lips of his chum.
He was tall and straight as an oak, with curls the color of frost-touched oak-leaves i' th' sunlight, and eyes like the amber drink when men hold it aloft ere quaffing, and his whole countenance bright and eager, and narrow like that o' a fox, but without a fox's cunning. Then he seemed fashioned to run, and ride, and war, as doth become all men, whether of high or low estate.
He did not know whether he loved it best when the thickets were all in bloom with pink crab apple and the brown, wintry hills had put on their first spring green, or when every valley was scarlet and golden with frost-touched maple trees in the autumn.
Scarlet fever raged in the village one winter, sweeping many little ones into the grave. Of their three children, two were taken; and the third was spared, only to droop, like a frost-touched plant, and die ere the summer came. From that time, all of Andy Lovell's customers noted a change in the man; and no wonder. Andy had loved these children deeply.
Not only does its yearly recurrence make it a landmark of the passing of seasons, but the cold northwest breeze which almost invariably follows it, sucked in from Saskatchewan, breathing of snow flurries on the frost-touched tundra of the Arctic barrens, carries a threat of winter that all the world knows. The summer is over, it says to outdoor creatures, and it is time to put in fall stores.
The Baroness herself, that so well-preserved flower, began to look like the last solitary frost-touched rose on a November bush. I myself watched the slow decline of luxury by half-tones and semi-tones! Frightful, upon my honor!
Under the scarlet glory of frost-touched maples, beside the river strolled Sylvia, conscious of looking very well and being admired; but contrary to the age-old belief about her sex and age, the sensation of looking very well and being admired by no means filled the entire field of her consciousness.
Food but you can't go far, and keep your eye on the Bend too," he nodded toward the door, beyond which lay the frost-touched valley in the early morning light of autumn. "Plenty of black squirrels and pigeons come here on account of the springs like this one, and I get 'em with a bow and arrow. I didn't call myself Robin Hood and Daniel Boone not for nothin' when I was knee-high to a grasshopper."
Romance brooded in that shadow, and on the lower foot-hills the frost-touched foliage glowed like a mosaic of jewels. Dressing hurriedly he went down to the small bar-room, whose litter of duffle-bags, guns, saddles, and camp utensils gave evidence of the presence of many hunters and fishermen.
Still, there are others for variety, as the wild guelder rose, which produces heavy bunches of red berries; dogwood, whose leaves when frost-touched take deep colours; barberry, yielding a pleasantly acid fruit; the wayfaring tree; not even forgetting the elder, but putting it at the outside, because, though flowering, the scent is heavy, and because the elder was believed of old time to possess some of the virtue now attributed to the blue gum, and to neutralise malaria by its own odour.
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