6o OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



field Jie fallow for a decade and see them come, 

 loyal little folk preparing the way for them, as 

 the trolls of ancient tales worked for those they 

 loved. Into the brown furrows troop the 

 goldenrod and asters, the wild grasses and 

 brambles making a first shelter for the seeds of 

 gray birch and wild cherry that magically come 

 and plant themselves. A thousand other forms 

 of life, beast and bird and insect, make the place 

 their home, all preparing it for the nursing of the 

 young pines to come. However rough has been 

 the work of the wood cutters, however persistent 

 the forest fires, somewhere is a seed pine stand- 

 ing, ready to spear the turf a mile a^yay with 

 brown javelins out of whose wounds shall spring 

 trees, just as out of the Cadmus-sown dragon's 

 teeth of old sprang armed men. The tree may be 

 a century-old gnarled trunk, too crooked and 

 knotty to be worthy the woodman's axe, or a ver- 

 dant sprout of a score of years' standing, green 

 and lusty — the result will be the same. When 

 the seeding year comes the brown cones will open 

 and the winds will bear the germs of the new 

 growth forth, spinning down the gale, whichever 

 way they list to blow. The tiny pines that result 

 may live for three or four years amongst the 



