h leaves.

To be prematurely bald is disheartening. This baldness was so premature as
to be serious. It was the first warning of decay.

* * * * *

The Empress Mother came sailing over the hill, high in the sky as befitted
her. Behind her, in the far distance, lay the white-ribbed downs, and,
along their ridge, there stretched against the sky a thin, shadowy, broken
line. It was the great oak wood, the dominion she had abandoned.

The Empress Mother was looking for a black sallow. Sallows there were in
plenty in and about the great wood, but she wanted one all to herself; one
fit for an imperial nursery. So she came with unerring instinct to the
brook.

The air hung motionless in the grip of a midsummer noon. As she floated
earthwards in stately majesty, the sunlight flung its radiance round her,
and her broad, white ribbon gleamed on its velvet ground like molten
silver.

The sallow humbly drooped her leaves as one who receives royalty.

[Illustration: A SMALL, GREEN-YELLOW, TRANSLUCENT CONE.]

For an hour the Empress Mother was busy. The leaves that she honoured were
chosen with the nicest discrimination, and she honoured more than a dozen.
Each, as she left it, bore on its upper surface a small, green-yellow,
shiny, translucent cone, rounded at the top, flat at the base, and ribbed
along its sides.

For the rest of the day the sallow held her head high.

* * * * *

There were fourteen eggs in all. Six reached maturity, but we are only
concerned with one of them. Outwardly he was much like the others. A day's
exposure softened the yellow of his shell to olive. Save at the base he
matched his leaf surroundings to a nicety. The base was suffused with a
faint blush of purple. As the days passed the purple darkened to black,
and shifted upwards, leaving the parts beneath it pale and colourless. It
seemed to struggle towards the sun. On the eighteenth day the shell parted
at the summit, and the little Emperor was hatched.

His youthful Majesty was mostly dark brown head. Such body as he could
boast of was tapering and greenish. But his head caught the eye. It was
well-nigh as large as the egg from which he came. Until he had fed he
seemed indifferent to his changed surroundings.

The first thing that he ate was his minute discarded shell, and, from this
slender meal, resulted disproportionate energy. He started forthwith on
his travels, outwards t