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It was a shadow nearly a hundred feet long, a high-cheeked head without a chin and all nose, like the profile of a mountain. But what was extraordinary was the total absence of an abdominal part to Mr. Waples' exaggerated shadow, for he distinctly saw a young maple-tree, in perfect moonlight, grow through the cavity where his stomach ought to have been.
There was no opening; and the bark was firm. He stole to the other side of the tree, his head craftily outstretched and reaching around far before him. The situation was clear to him at once, and his hungry muzzle jammed itself into the entrance to a chipmunk's hole. The maple-tree was dead, and partly decayed, up one side of the trunk.
A hard-working oriole papa, with a peremptory youngster in tow, now and then appeared in the pasture; and swallows, both barn and eave, came in merry, chattering flocks from their homes at the edge of the village. About the middle of the long stretch of road was a solitary maple-tree, and about thirty feet from it, and just within the pasture fence, the thorn, and the nest of my hopes.
"How very useful the maple-tree is, nurse! I wish there were maples in the garden, and I would make sugar, molasses, wine, and vinegar; and what else would I do with my maple-tree?" Mrs. Frazer laughed, and said, "The wood makes excellent fuel; but is also used in making bedsteads, chests of drawers, and many other things.
He preferred to spend most of his time in the tree tops, and Peter only got glimpses of him now and then. But if he didn't see him often it was less often that he failed to hear him. "I don't see when Redeye finds time to eat," declared Peter as he listened to the seemingly unending song in the maple-tree. "Redeye believes in singing while he works," said Jenny Wren.
Besides the leather-leggings, moccasins, deerskin hunting shirt, cap, and belt which composed his costume, he had a short heavy hunting-knife, a piece of tinder, a little tin pannikin, which he had been in the habit of carrying at his belt, and a large cake of maple sugar. This last is a species of sugar which is procured by the Indians from the maple-tree.
Rosy, meanwhile, sat upon a pack of shingles under a young maple-tree which grew within a few steps of the water. Paston lay at her feet and dug in the sand with a split shingle drawn from the pack, while the other young people tramped and frolicked with shrill cries through the dismantled grove and unfinished buildings. "It was at her house, you remember, that I first met you," said Paston.
Little he knew of the locust that suddenly whirred his mills of shrillness in the maple-tree, and sounded so hot, hot, hot; or those others that railed at the country quiet from the dim shade around the brick house; or even the rain-crow that sat on the fence and swore to them in the face of a sunny sky that they should see rain ere the day were done.
He couldn't resist an affable nod to Bab and Betty, for they stood under the maple-tree, and the memory of their circulating library made him forget his dignity in his gratitude. "We will take them next time, but now I want to talk to you," began Miss Celia, as Lita climbed the hill. "My brother has been ill, and I have brought him here to get well.
It was not before the 10th or 12th of April, that the return of the swans, geese, and ducks, gave certain indications of the advance of spring. The juice of the maple-tree began to flow, and the women repaired to the woods for the purpose of collecting it. This tree which abounds to the southward, is not, I believe found to the northward of the Saskatchawan.
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