It has seemed to me ever since I came here that
it was impossible that there could be calm gentle nights and unshattered
moonlight anywhere in the world. But tonight somehow, all the beautiful
things I have always loved seem to have become possible again--and this
is good, and makes me feel a deep, certain, exquisite happiness. It must
be autumn at home now--the harbour is a-dream and the old Glen hills
blue with haze, and Rainbow Valley a haunt of delight with wild asters
blowing all over it--our old "farewell-summers." I always liked that
name better than 'aster'--it was a poem in itself.
"Rilla, you know I've always had premonitions. You remember the Pied
Piper--but no, of course you wouldn't--you were too young. One evening
long ago when Nan and Di and Jem and the Merediths and I were together
in Rainbow Valley I had a queer vision or presentiment--whatever you
like to call it. Rilla, I saw the Piper coming down the Valley with a
shadowy host behind him. The others thought I was only pretending--but
I saw him for just one moment. And Rilla, last night I saw him again. I
was doing sentry-go and I saw him marching across No-man's-land from our
trenches to the German trenches--the same tall shadowy form, piping
weirdly--and behind him followed boys in khaki. Rilla, I tell you I saw
him--it was no fancy--no illusion. I heard his music, and then--he
was gone.
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