A Tale from the Skidway 31 



knew that it was its foster father, the sun, 

 who had been calling all through the summer 

 hours. Henceforth, its mother, the earth, 

 and its foster father, the sun, would nourish 

 and sustain it in sunshine and storm, in heat 

 and cold. 



" Two years went hy and there was only 

 a tiny tuft of green to show for the seven 

 hundred odd days. For, living as it did in the 

 deep forest, under the skirts of large trees, 

 fifteen minutes of sunlight a day was all the 

 little seedling got, and one cannot grow very 

 fast on such short rations. It would have 

 liked to walk out into the sunlight and 

 warmth, but God had placed it in the gloom, 

 so it stayed there and lived its life the best it 

 could. 



" On the little pine's fifth birthday, one 

 could have covered it with a tumbler, so 

 slowly it grew. 



" When it was ten years old a four quart 

 pail would have screened it from the world, 

 while on its twenty-first birthday, when it 

 was of age, a bushel basket would have cov- 



