UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



out of the camp and off into the stone wall, with 

 great spitefulness. All-the-y ear-round love among 

 the wild creatures is very rare, if it occurs at all. 

 Love is seasonal and brief among most of them. 

 My little recluse has ample supplies for quite a 

 family, but I am certain he will spend the winter 

 alone there in the darkness of his subterranean 

 dwelling. He must have at least a peck of nuts that 

 we gave him, besides all the supplies that he carried 

 in from his foraging about the orchard and the fields 

 earlier in the season. The temptation to dig down 

 and uncover his treasures is very great, but my curi- 

 osity might lead to his undoing, at least to his seri- 

 ous discomfort, so I shall forbear, resting content in 

 the thought that at least one fellow mortal has got 

 all that his heart desires. 



As our lives have touched here at my writing- 

 table, each working out his life-problems, I have 

 thought of what a gulf divides my little friend and 

 me; yet he is as earnestly solving his problems as I 

 am mine; though, of course, he does not worry over 

 them, or take thought of them, as I do. I cannot 

 even say that something not himself takes thought 

 for him; there is no thought in the matter; there is 

 what we have to call impulse, instinct, inherited 

 habit, and the like, though these are only terms for 

 mysteries. He, too, shares in this wonderful some- 

 thing we call life. The evolutionary struggle and 

 unfolding was for him as well as for me. He, too, is 

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