stowed away the whole big crockful of new pickles, and when Aunt Elizabeth came to look them over she admitted she could not tell those which Aunt Laura had done from mine.
“This evening was very delightful. I had a good time with myself, out in the garden. It was lovely there tonight with the eerie loveliness of a fine November evening. At sunset there had been a wild little shower of snow, but it had cleared off, leaving the world just lightly covered, and the air clear and tingling. Almost all the flowers, including my wonderful asters, which were a vision all through the fall, were frozen black two weeks ago, but the beds still had white drifts of alyssum all around them. A big, smoky-red hunter’s moon was just rising above the tree-teps. There was a yellow-red glow in the west behind the white hills on which a few dark trees grew. The snow had banished all the strange deep sadness of a dead landscape on a late fall evening, and the slopes and meadows of old New Moon farm were transformed into a wonderland in the faint, early moonlight. The old house had a coating of sparkling snow on its roof. Its lighted windows glowed like jewels. It looked exactly like a picture on a Christmas card. There was just a suggestion of grey-blue chimney smoke over the kitchen. A nice reek of burning autumn leaves came from Cousin Jimmy’s smouldering bonfires in the lane. My cats were there, too, stealthy, goblin-eyed, harmonising with the hour and the place. The twilight—appropriately called the cats’ light—is the only time when a cat really reveals himself. Saucy Sal was thin and gleaming, like the silvery ghost of a pussy. Daff was like a dark-grey, skulking tiger. He certainly gives the world assurance of a cat: he doesn’t condescend to every one—and he never talks too much. They pounced at my feet and tore off and frisked back and rolled each other over—and were all so a part of the night and the haunted place that they didn’t disturb my thoughts at all. I walked up and down the paths and around the dial and the sum-
