ts guardian
spirit and was almost certain to insure
disaster for the guilty person. On the other
hand, to protect a tree would bring some token
of appreciation from the dryad. A good
introduction to the story would be the telling
of one or two of these tree myths as found in
Gayley's _Classic Myths_ or Bulfinch's _Age of
Fable_. A fine literary version of one of them
is in Lowell's "Rhoecus." But the beautiful and
kindly helpfulness of Old Pipes will carry its
own message whether one knows any mythology or
not.

OLD PIPES AND THE DRYAD

FRANK R. STOCKTON

A Mountain brook ran through a little village. Over the brook there was
a narrow bridge, and from the bridge a foot-path led out from the
village and up the hill-side, to the cottage of Old Pipes and his
mother.

For many, many years Old Pipes had been employed by the villagers to
pipe the cattle down from the hills. Every afternoon, an hour before
sunset, he would sit on a rock in front of his cottage and play on his
pipes. Then all the flocks and herds that were grazing on the mountains
would hear him, wherever they might happen to be, and would come down to
the village--the cows by the easiest paths, the sheep by those not quite
so easy, and the goats by the steep and rocky ways that were hardest of
all.

But now, for a year or more, Old Pipes had not piped the cattle home. It
is true that every afternoon he sat upon the rock and played upon his
pipes; but the cattle did not hear him. He had grown old, and his breath
was feeble. The echoes of his cheerful notes, which used to come from
the rocky hill on the other side of the valley, were heard no more; and
twenty yards from Old Pipes one could scarcely tell what tune he was
playing. He had become somewhat deaf, and did not know that the sound of
his pipes was so thin and weak, and that the cattle did not hear him.
The cows, the sheep, and the goats came down every afternoon as before;
but this was because two boys and a girl were sent up after them. The
villagers did not wish the good old man to know that his piping was no
longer of any use; so they paid him his little salary every month, and
said nothing about the two boys and the girl.

Old Pipes's mother was, of course, a great deal older than he was, and
was as deaf as a gate--post, latch, hinges, and all--and she never knew
that the sound of her son's pi