THE EDGE OF NIGHT 73 



of direction — for this one place — he will arrive, 

 I am sure, or he will die on the way. 



Yet I could wish there were another tree here, 

 besides the apple, and another toad. Suppose he 

 never gets back ? Only one toad less ? A great 

 deal more than that. Here in the old Baldwin 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 

 castings, beneath the nest of the owls, it may be ; 

 for my toad in the hickory always buried him- 

 self so, down in the debris at the bottom of the 

 hole, where, in a kind of cold storage, he pre- 

 served 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 winter that I do not pause and think of 

 him asleep in there. He is no mere toad any 

 more. He has passed into a genius loci, the Guard- 

 ian Spirit of the tree, warring in the green leaf 

 against worm and grub and slug, and in the dry 

 leaf hiding himself, a heart of life, within the 

 tree's thin ribs, as if to save the old shell to an- 

 other summer. 



