“‘Let me help you. The Pine has always been the most plentiful tree in the mountains and the Redwood has been the tallest. I have been out of place and able to do but little save giving shade. Now I think I can help.’
“She whispered her idea to Princess, and when Princess heard she was so pleased that she soared high into the sky and sang to the morning sun. Then down again she flew, and told the silver stream her secret. And this is what she did:
“First she went to the single oak and took from it several fine, green branches, all covered with fresh leaves. These she carried one at a time up the side of the hill and laid them side by side on the grass. Then she called to the sun and he came over the treetops and warmed the oak leaves with his golden light. When they were all glowing Princess called to the clouds and asked for just a little rain. Down it came, so very quietly that not even the sun went away. And so the drops, falling through the sunshine to the oak leaves, formed a lovely rainbow. Then the rain stopped, but the rainbow remained, coloring the oak leaves with blue and red and gold and amber and violet. Princess was so happy, then, that she could hardly wait to carry the beautiful colored sprays into the forest to plant them at the foot of the tall trees. All the wood-folk—the rabbits and the snakes and the silly young bears—came out to watch her as she worked. When her task was through she called all her subjects to her and introduced them to the new color she had brought into the mountains, and she called it Child of The Oak.
“Child of The Oak grew very much in a short time. She had the form of a clinging vine; up over the branches of the other trees she crept, just like a really and truly baby. Her colors were the loveliest you have ever seen. Just think of leaves that were golden red as the loveliest poppies and green as the wildest hillside and violet like the softest field flowers and blue like the morning sky. She was so beautiful that all the trees grew to love her in a very short time.
“Then, one day, the most awful thing happened.
“It was early morning in the month of May. Across the further valley and right through the Valley of Shade of The Mountain Lake and up the hillside and into the mountain land, came a whole school of children, to the place where no man had ever been before. It was very nice at first. They sang songs about Angels and Fairies and the one that went like this:
“I’ll sing you a song of the fields in the Spring
With a chatter of birds in the treetops,
And the poppies and daisies will dance as I sing
And the birdlings will warble and flutter a wing