Now, as he swung on vigorously in the October light, there was about him a joyousness of purpose which belonged to his age and his aspirations.  It was an atmosphere, an emanation thrown off by respiring vitality.

Across the road the sunshine fell in long, level shafts.  The spirit of October was abroad in the wood—­veiling itself in a faint, bluish haze like the smoke of the greenwood when it burns.  Overhead, crimson and yellow ran riot among the trees, the flame of the maple extinguishing the dull red of the oak, the clear gold of the hickory flashing through the gloss of the holly.  As yet the leaves had not begun to fall; they held tenaciously to the living branches, fluttering light heads in the first autumn chill.  In the underbrush, where the deerberry showed hectic blotches, a squirrel worked busily, completing its winter store, while in the slanting sun rays a tawny butterfly, like a wind-blown, loosened tiger lily, danced its last mad dance with death.

To Nicholas the scene was without significance.  With a gesture he threw off the spell of its beauty, as he shifted the “sack” of corn meal upon his shoulder.  He had found Uncle Ish tottering homeward with the load, and he had taken it from him with a careless promise to leave it at the old negro’s cabin door—­then, passing him by a stride, he had gone on his kindly, confident way.  He forgot Uncle Ish as readily as he forgot the bag he carried.  His mind was busily reviewing the points of his last case and the possible facts of a more important one he believed to be coming to him.  In this connection he went back to his first fight in the little court-house, and he laughed with an appreciation of the humour of his success.  It was Turner, after all, who had given it to him; Turner, who, having bought a horse that died upon the journey home, wanted revenge as well as recompense.  He remembered his perturbation as he rose to cross-examine the defendant—­the nervousness with which he drove his weapons home.  It had all seemed so important to him then—­the court, his client, the great, greasy horse dealer forced into the witness stand.

He had proved his case by the defendant, and he had won as well a mild reputation among the farmers who had assembled for the day.  Since then he had done well, and the judge’s patronage had placed much in his hands that, otherwise, would have gone elsewhere.

Beyond the wood, the uncultivated wasteland sported its annual carnival of golden rod and sumach, and across the brilliant plumes a round, red sun hung suspended in a quiet sky.  In the corn field, where the late crop was fast maturing, negro women chanted shrilly as they pulled the “fodder,” their high-coloured kerchiefs blending, like autumn foliage, with the landscape.  Around them the bared stalks rose boldly row on row, reserving their scarred and yellow husks for the last harvest of the year.