owards the light as far as he could go. On the leaf
point he built himself a pigmy throne of silk; and this was his citadel
for a week. He only left it to feed, nibbling the leaf edge jerkily on
either side of him. At the week's end he lost his appetite. His body was
now of a decided green--green with the finest powdering of yellow. About
his waist the yellow fused into a crescent. Nine of him would have
measured an inch.

On the eighth day he ceased feeding altogether. He sat with his
hind-quarters anchored to his throne, his head and fore legs raised from
off the leaf, rigid and immovable. For three days he grew yellower and
yellower. Then his skin split down his back, and he successfully
accomplished his first moult. In his short span he passed through many
changes, but never one more quaint than this.

During his abstinence he had grown two horns. They branched straight out
before him, bristling with short spines, a full third of his length.

He moulted once again before the winter, but this was merely a growing
moult. Until October he never left his leaf point. Then Nature herself
warned him to seek shelter. The weather was breaking. Rain he did not
mind, but wind was different. Suppose his leaf was torn from its socket
and hurled a hundred yards into the field?

Leaves were falling all round him, and it was time to take up his winter
quarters. He spent a day or two in reaching them, yet they were not far
off--merely the junction of his own particular branch to the parent stem.
There, in the shelter of the fork, he spun himself a silken blanket, and
in it he slept peacefully till April.

Peacefully through everything, and in spite of everything. Rain beat in
drenching floods against the sallow, hailstorms lashed her branches, snow
enshrouded her, hoar-frost bespangled her,--the little Emperor was quite
unmoved. As the bark weathered from ebony to rusty olive, chameleon-like,
he changed with it. This was the only outward sign he gave of life.

* * * * *

The catkins bloomed once more, and once more were rudely gathered. With
the bursting of the leaf the little Emperor crept from his blanket. He
found the world much as he had left it. Only the leaves were covered with
soft down, smaller, and easier to bite. He was by now a full half inch in
length, big enough to roam at large, and hungry enough to eat the tree. He
started on the first leaf he came to, and, in five minutes, had gna