90 FOREST FANCIES 



Knight of the Polar Star and a noble of the 

 land. He took for his crest three crowns on 

 three fields, emblematic of the Three King- 

 doms of Nature, the hemlet bore his favorite 

 flower. 



Did the old linden-tree dream of the honors 

 done one of the linden-named? Perhaps the 

 wind or the bees brought word, though the lin- 

 den-tree must have known it before, and that 

 was the message that she had been trying to 

 tell. 



And so the years passed, silvering the hair 

 of the ^^Little Botany Boy,'' yet he ever kept 

 the brilliant eyes and the alertness of his 

 youth, and that love of order, promptness, and 

 regularity which, with unfaltering faith, had 

 accomplished his life work. 



Then for six years he rested as an invalid 

 from his labors. Carl, the eldest of his six 

 children, sat in his Chair of Botany. When he 

 could no longer walk, he would be carried to 

 his museum, and the treasures that had come 

 from the north and the south and the east and 

 the west would repeat their stories over and 



