ANNE of the ISLAND
by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Chapter I
The Shadow of Change
"Harvest is ended and summer is gone," quoted Anne Shirley, gazing
across the shorn fields dreamily. She and Diana Barry had been picking
apples in the Green Gables orchard, but were now resting from their
labors in a sunny corner, where airy fleets of thistledown drifted by
on the wings of a wind that was still summer-sweet with the incense of
ferns in the Haunted Wood.
But everything in the landscape around them spoke of autumn. The sea was
roaring hollowly in the distance, the fields were bare and sere, scarfed
with golden rod, the brook valley below Green Gables overflowed
with asters of ethereal purple, and the Lake of Shining Waters was
blue--blue--blue; not the changeful blue of spring, nor the pale azure
of summer, but a clear, steadfast, serene blue, as if the water
were past all moods and tenses of emotion and had settled down to a
tranquility unbroken by fickle dreams.
