Again and again Winter ran through the wood. When he breathed on them, the leaves turned yellow and the earth grew hard. Even the Anemones, who lay below in the earth waiting till my Lady Spring should come back as she had promised, they too felt his breath and shuddered down in their roots. "Ugh! how cold it is!" they said to one another. "How shall we stand the winter? We shall die for a certainty before it is over." "Now it's _my_ time," said Winter. "Now I need no longer steal about like a thief in the night. After to-day I shall look everybody in the face, and bite their noses, and make their eyes run with water." At night he let loose the Storm. "Let me see you make a clean sweep," he said. And the Storm obeyed his command. He went howling through the wood, and shook the branches till they creaked and cracked. Any that were rotten broke off, and those that held on had to turn and bow this way and that. "Away with that finery!" howled the Storm as he tore off the leaves. "This is not the time to dress yourself up. The snow will soon be coming on to your branches; that will be quite another story." All the leaves fell in terror to the earth, but the Storm would not let them rest. He seized them round the waist and waltzed with them out over the field, high up into the air, and into the wood again, swept them into great heaps, and then scattered them in all directions--just as it pleased him. Not till morning came did the Storm grow weary and lie down to rest. "Now you shall have peace for a time," he said. "I will take a rest till we have the spring cleaning. Then we can have another turn together--that is, if there are any of you left by then." And the leaves lay down to rest, and spread themselves like a thick carpet over the whole land. The Anemones felt that it had become pleasantly warm. "Can it be my Lady Spring already?" they asked each other. "I haven't got my buds ready," shouted one of them. "Nor I! Nor I!" cried the others in one voice. But one of them took courage and peeped out over the earth. "Good-morning!" cried the withered Beech Leaves. "It is a little too early, little lady. I hope you will be none the worse for it." "Isn't it my Lady Spring?" inquired the Anemone. "Not yet," answered the Beech Leaves. "It is only the green Beech Leaves that you were so angry with last summer. The green has gone from us, so we have no great finery to boast of now. We have enjoyed our youth and had our fling, I can tell you. And now we lie here and protect all the little flowers in the earth against the winter." "And meanwhile _I_ stand shivering in all my bare boughs," said the Beech peevishly. The Anemones talked it over one to another down below in the earth, and thought it was grand. "Those grand Beech Leaves!" they said. "Mind you remember this next summer when I burst into leaf," said the Beech. "We will! we will!" whispered the Anemones. But that sort of promise is easily made--and easily broken. THE WEEDS