Silence keeping— Soft gray mosses Cover rocks, And, onward creeping, Claim the mountain! Forward leaping, Winged seeds! You’ll soon be peeping O’er the rim, Where, in the hollow Of the mountain, Xyntli’s sleeping. —and then to see that the forest actually is marching up the sides of her own fortress! Wouldn’t that be discouraging? “But Xyntli is not discouraged. Not she! She calls up her fiery snakes from below, and sends them crawling down the sides of the mountain, while she stands on the top, waving her wonderful smoky veil, and urging them on. “Down they glide,—filling up the channels the streams have dug, hissing with hatred as they swallow the streams themselves, and devouring the advancing forest. “At last the mountain stands once more, smooth and polished—the green army driven back to the valley. “Then Xyntli is satisfied, and cuddles down in her hollow for another nap. “It was during one of these naps—after it had lasted a very long time—that the Bee Baby was born. “Year after year, the forest had marched steadily on; so the people who lived in the valley seldom thought how the snakes had come down and driven it back in the old days. The very old people occasionally shook their heads, and said: ‘When Xyntli wakens she will have her own.’ But the young people didn’t listen, and followed the forest, building their curious houses fairly upon the slope of the mountain. “They were very strange houses indeed—a good deal like willow bird-cages. In a snowstorm they would have been about as useful for a house as a mosquito net for an overcoat. But there came never a snowstorm; and the house where the Bee Baby lived was built of slender branches of trees, set in the ground, side by side, and interwoven with palm-fibre—the light glimmered through it in little flecks. The roof went up to a point in the middle and sloped four ways. That was woven even closer, of the palm leaves, so the rain couldn’t come through. The house had only one room, and nearly the whole of one side was the doorway—with the roof extended over it a little way, like an awning. There was no floor but the earth, and no door. So, when the Bee Baby woke in the morning, all he had to do was to rub his big brown eyes with his little brown fists, and trot through the open doorway, to be in the warm sunshine, where there wasn’t a fence nor a bar between him and the whole enchanting world. “There was no one to watch him very closely, either, because he had no mother. He did have a father; but he spent a great deal of his time driving a pair of drowsy oxen in a cart with two solid, wooden wheels. Such a queer cart!