Some other time I will tell you how he passed that summer, how he fought for and won a wife, how they built a nest together and made a store together, of the four little dormice, and of the sad fate that befel two of them. Here I can only tell the last scene. It was late autumn. His wife had already felt the coming of winter, and retired to her six months' sleep. He himself had sealed her in. He had taught the two small dormice how to build their nests (honeysuckle fibre and dead leaf), and pointed out the necessity of getting into them before Christmas. He had rebuilt his own nest in the same old hollow, for he knew that he could not hold out much longer. [Illustration: MOTHER WAS CLIMBING PAINFULLY UP TO HIM.] With every light breeze that crept down the hedgerow now came the rustle of the falling leaf. Each night he had seemed less inclined to wake, and this night he seemed less inclined than ever. The sun had scarcely set before he felt chilled and uncomfortable. To warm himself he did three minutes' gymnastics. The end of them found him perched on the same old broken twig, and, when he looked down, even as before, mother was climbing painfully up to him. It needed but a glance to see that she would not outlive the winter. Had she made a nest? No, she had not troubled. The hole she was in last year would do. Perhaps she would take his nest, he could easily build another. Most certainly she would not. He could help her to put some leaves into hers to-morrow. But that night came the first frost. [Illustration: BUT THAT NIGHT CAME THE FIRST FROST.] THE PURPLE EMPEROR Down by the brookside the Sallow drooped her sunburnt leaves despondently. Things were at their dullest. Three months ago she had been a tree of importance. Her dark, slender branches had formed a fashionable _rendez-vous_. Each evening she had seen her golden catkins studded with opals--the eyes of soft, furry, blundering moths. Each day the bees had thronged to pay court to her. Then came Palm Sunday. Her catkins were stripped from her, worn for a few hours in yokels' hats, and flung aside. The moths came no more; the bees forsook her for the bluebells. But the kingfishers cared nothing for her appearance. They nested, as usual, deep in the bank below, in a hollow formed by her roots. The kingfishers were always in a hurry, and their colours were fussy and discordant. They flashed up and down the brook like a pair of demented fireworks. The whole bank reeked with the discarded meals of their progeny. By the time the nestlings were fledged, the sallow wore its summer mantle, a down-lined cloak of green. The interesting event had been a diversion. Now there seemed nothing to look forward to. On the one side lay the meadow-land, stretching in unbroken monotony to the sky-line; on the other, the brook; beyond its wooded bank, more meadow-land.