CHAPTER I 



THE FOUNDLING 



T was a rugged old tree 

 standing sturdy and big 

 among the slender second- 

 growth. The woodmen had 

 spared it because it was 

 too gnarled and too difficult for them to 

 handle. But the Woodpecker, and a host 

 of wood-folk that look to the Woodpecker 

 for lodgings, had marked and used it for 

 many years. Its every cranny and bore- 

 hole was inhabited by some quaint elfin 

 of the woods; the biggest hollow of all, 

 just below the first limb, had done duty 

 for two families of the Flickers who first 

 made it, and now was the homing hole of 

 a mother Gray squirrel. 



[3] 



