according to the calendar, is already ended. Much in this world must
pause unfinished, or come to abrupt conclusion. People "die suddenly
at last," after the most tedious illnesses. "Married and lived happy
ever after," is the inclusive summary that winds up many an old tale
whose time of action only runs through hours. If in this summer-time
with Leslie Goldthwaite your thoughts have broadened somewhat with
hers, some questions for you have been partly answered; if it has
appeared to you how a life enriches itself by drawing toward and going
forth into the life of others through seeing how this began with her,
it is no unfinished tale that I leave with you.

A little picture I will give you farther on, a hint of something
farther yet, and say good by.

Some of them came back to Outledge, and stayed far into the still rich
September. Delight and Leslie sat before the Green Cottage one
morning, in the heart of a golden haze and a gorgeous bloom. All
around the feet of the great hills lay the garlands of early-ripened
autumn. You see nothing like it in the lowlands;--nothing like the
fire of the maples, the carbuncle-splendor of the oaks, the flash of
scarlet sumachs and creepers, the illumination of every kind of little
leaf, in its own way, upon which the frost-touch comes down from those
tremendous heights that stand rimy in each morning's sun, trying on
white caps that by and by they shall pull down heavily over their
brows, till they cloak all their shoulders also in the like sculptured
folds, to stand and wait, blind, awful chrysalides, through the long
winter of their death and silence.

Delight and Leslie had got letters from the Josselyns and Dakie Thayne.
There was news in them such as thrills always the half-comprehending