On the topmost twig of a maple tree there grew a seed. In the springtime the gentle movement of the sap and the soft rustle of the leaves whispering among themselves had awakened him; then, day by day, half sleeping and half conscious, he had fed upon what the roots provided, stretching himself lazily in the sunshine. Presently his wing began to unfold.

“That is very curious,” said he, stirring a little. “It must be a mistake. I don’t flutter about like the bees.” That bit of wing, which seemed his and not his, puzzled him. “It must belong to something else,” he thought. And afterward he was always on the lookout for a bee or a dragon fly with only one wing. But none came.

The hot summer noons and the long moonlit nights became sultrier and the leaves dropped. “How withered I am!” said the seed to his most intimate friend, a leaf that hung from a near bough. “It makes me feel quite brittle.” But the leaf did not answer, for just then it fell from the twig with a queer, reluctant shiver to the ground.

“Ah!” murmured the maple seed, “I understand.” So he was not surprised when a rude breeze twisted him off one day, and sent him spinning into space.

“Here I go,” thought he, “and this is the end of it.”

“Puff!” said the breeze, who had seen much of the world, and looked with contempt upon the untravelled. “Puff! how ignorant!” and he blew the seed right into a crack in the earth.

“It must be the end, for all that,” insisted the seed. No wonder he thought so, for it was cold and dark where he lay. A troubled cloud leaned down and wept over him. Then he began to grow amazingly in the warmth and moisture.

“If this goes on,” he thought, “I shall certainly burst, and then I must die. How is one to live, with a crack in his sides?”

But the maple seed was wrong. He did not die. An unsuspected, mysterious strength sustained him. His roots found food in the brown earth, and he lifted up a slender stem into the pure sunlight and warm air. Through spring, summer, autumn and winter, year after year, this lived and grew, until the tiny sapling had become a beautiful tree, with spreading branches.

“Ah!” said the tree, “how stupid I was.”

It was very pleasant on the lawn. An old couple from the house near by came out in good weather to sit under the tree. They reminded him of some fragile leaves he had seen fluttering somewhere in the past. He was glad to have them come, and he kept his coolest shade for them. Partly for their sakes, he liked to have the robins sing in his branches.

The years went by. The old man tottered out alone to sit in the cool shadow. He was bent and sorrowful.

“Ah!” sighed the tree, “I know! I know! He has lost his leaf, and feels brittle. If I could only tell him this is not the end!”

After this, many sunny days came, but not the old man, and the tree concluded that he had been blown away. “If he only knew that he would grow again!” he said to himself. “Unless one knows that, it is so uncomfortable to lie in the dark.”

A great storm came. The sky blackened, the winds blew with might, and the heavy rain fell. The maple was uprooted and broken. The next day there came men with axes who cut the tree in pieces, and drew it to the house.

“Is this the end?” he questioned. But no,—the logs were piled one day in the fireplace in a large, sunny room. The old man leaned from his chair to warm his hands by the cheerful heat the crimson flame gave out. “Is it the maple?” he said. “Ah! this goes with the rest.”

The fire grew brighter, burned duller, turned to embers, smouldered to ashes. The hearth was cold. The figure was sitting still in the armchair, but the old man himself had gone away.

The spirit of the maple whispered, “Does he know? There is no end.”