e upon a time
an old man found the pot of gold at the rainbow's end. There IS a pot
there, it is said, but it is very hard to find because you can never get
to the rainbow's end before it vanishes from your sight. But this old
man found it, just at sunset, when Iris, the guardian of the rainbow
gold, happened to be absent. As he was a long way from home, and the pot
was very big and heavy, he decided to hide it until morning and then get
one of his sons to go with him and help him carry it. So he hid it under
the boughs of the sleeping poplar tree.

"When Iris came back she missed the pot of gold and of course she was in
a sad way about it. She sent Mercury, the messenger of the gods, to
look for it, for she didn't dare leave the rainbow again, lest somebody
should run off with that too. Mercury asked all the trees if they had
seen the pot of gold, and the elm, oak and pine pointed to the poplar
and said,

"'The poplar can tell you where it is.'

"'How can I tell you where it is?' cried the poplar, and she held up all
her branches in surprise, just as we hold up our hands--and down tumbled
the pot of gold. The poplar was amazed and indignant, for she was a very
honest tree. She stretched her boughs high above her head and declared
that she would always hold them like that, so that nobody could hide
stolen gold under them again. And she taught all the little poplars she
knew to stand the same way, and that is why Lombardy poplars always do.
But the aspen poplar leaves are always shaking, even on the very calmest
day. And do you know why?"

And then she told us the old legend that the cross on which the Saviour
of the world suffered was made of aspen poplar wood and so never again
could its poor, shaken, shivering leaves know rest or peace. There was
an aspen in the orchard, the very embodiment of youth and spring in its
litheness and symmetry. Its little leaves were hanging tremulously, not
yet so fully blown as to hide its development of bough and twig, making
poetry against the spiritual tints of a spring sunset.

"It does look sad," said Peter, "but it is a pretty tree, and it wasn't
its fault."

"There's a heavy dew and it's time we stopped talking nonsense and went
in," decreed Felicity. "If we don't we'll all have a cold, and then
we'll be miserable enough, but it won't be very exciting."

"All the same, I wish something exciting would happen," finished the
Story Girl, as we walked up through the orchard, p