22 THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 



gathering twilight there steals upon him an irresist- 



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



' y>and dog and man are guided, he makes his sure way 



-^'5 back to his orchard home. 



Would my toad of the Baldwin tree go back be- ! 

 yond the orchard, over the road, over the wide 

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

 ;v brought him from there ? We shall see. During the 

 1 .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, 

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

 way. 



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 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 







