A Little Gipsy Lass by Gordon Stables

Up in the north the weather continued clear and calm and beautiful; woods and forests, now bedded with fallen leaves, a carpet on which those feeble folk the coneys played and gambolled all day long, but ready, aye ready, to dart into their burrows should their 'cute, alert ears detect the sound of a footfall or snapping of a twiglet in the distance.

The sun went down about three in the afternoon now, but the gloaming was long, and the stars ever so large and near and brilliant. Indeed, the tallest spruce-trees seemed high enough to move amongst them, one would have thought. The aurora borealis danced and flitted on the northern sky above the sea every night, their marching spears of light sometimes darting upwards as far as the zenith.