22 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



gathering twilight there steals upon him an irresist- 

 ible longing ; and guided by it, as bee and pigeon 

 and dog and man are guided, he makes his sure way 

 back to his orchard home. 



Would my toad of the Baldwin tree go back be- 

 yond the orchard, over the road, over the wide 

 meadow, over to the old tree, half a mile away, if I 

 brought him from there ? We shall see. During the 

 coming summer I shall mark him in some manner, 

 and bringing him here to the hickory, I shall then 

 watch the old apple tree yonder to see if he re- 

 turns. It will be a hard, perilous journey. But his 

 longing will not let him rest; and, guided by his 

 mysterious sense of direction, for that one place, 

 he will arrive, I am sure, or he will die on the 



^ay- 

 Suppose he never gets back ? Only one toad less ? 

 A great deal more than that. There in the old Bald- 

 win he has made his home for I don't know 7 how 

 long, hunting over its world of branches in the sum- 

 mer, sleeping down in its deep holes during the 

 winter down under the chips and punk and cast- 

 ings, beneath the nest of the owls, it may be ; for 

 my toad in the hickory always buried himself so, 

 down in the debris at the bottom of the hole, where, 

 in a kind of cold storage, he preserved himself until 

 thawed out by the spring. 



I never pass the old apple in the summer but that 

 I stop to pay my respects to the toad ; nor in the 



