such a beautiful ripe apple as to eat it.
He put it to his mouth and took a great bite of it, then another bite,
and another. Soon there was nothing left of the apple but the core,
which Gerald threw away. He smacked his lips and went on his way, but
the wind in the apple trees sang, sorrowfully, after him:

"Here in the orchard are apples two,
But gone is the treasure that fell for you."

And after a while Hilda came down the lane that passed by the orchard
wall. She looked up at the two beautiful gold apples that hung on the
branch of the old apple tree, and she listened to the wind as it sang
in the branches to her:

"Here in the orchard are apples two,
A treasure they hold for a child like you."

Then the wind blew harder and, _plump_, an apple fell in the lane
right in front of Hilda.

She picked it up joyfully. She had never seen so large and so golden
an apple. She held it carefully in her clasped hands and thought what
a pity it would be to eat it, because then it would be gone.

"I will keep this gold apple always," Hilda said, and she wrapped it
up in the clean handkerchief that was in her pocket. Then Hilda went
home, and there she laid away in a drawer the gold apple that the old
apple tree had given her, closing the drawer tightly. The apple lay
inside, in the dark, and all wrapped up, for many days, until it
spoiled. And when Hilda next went down the lane and past the orchard,
the wind in the apple tree sang to her:

"Only one apple where once there were two,
Gone is the treasure I gave to you."

Last of all, Rudolph went down the lane one fine fall morning when the
sun was shining warm and the wind was out. There, hanging over the
orchard wall, he saw just one great gold apple that seemed to him the
most beautiful apple that he had ever seen. As he stood looking up at
it, the wind in the apple tree sang to him, and it said:

"Round and gold on the apple tree,
A wonderful treasure, hanging, see!"

Then the wind blew harder, and down fell the last gold apple of the
three into Rudolph's waiting hands.

He held it a long time and looked at it as Gerald and Hilda had,
thinking how good it would be to eat, and how pretty it would be to
look at if he were to save it. Then he decided not to do either of
these things. He took his jack-knife out of his pocket and cut the
gold apple in half, straight across, and exactly in the middle between
the blossom and the stem.