AN isolated ranch on Puget Sound. A hillside that swung like a cloud of blended gold and rose and green between the blue of the sky and the deeper blue of the sea. A big orchard whose trees had taken on long downward curves beneath the heaviness of their fruit age. Under these trees, in the brightest hour of the brightest day, twilight, dim and fragrant. Butter?ies drifting brilliantly here and there, or sinking to rest under the lifted tents of their wings. The goldness and the languor of autumn hovering over everything; and a stillness, broken only by a low wind, lingering and elusive; a wind that breathed out the very heart break of the year. Mist-fragments, pink as fields of Oleander bloom, loitering across the water and purpling as they settled into the hollows of the hills on the islands, where the smooth madrones shone redly among the dark firs and cedars. North, east, and south the unbroken forest, climbing and darkening as it climbed; and at the far horizon the snow-mountains, glimmering, misty and beautiful, through the autumnal splendor. To the west the wide sweep of undulating sea which ebbs and ?ows, under its opaline lights, on.