Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn: An Old Thorn

An Old Thorn

I

The little village of Ingden lies in a hollow of the South Wiltshire
Downs, the most isolated of the villages in that lonely district. Its
one short street is crossed at right angles in the middle part by the
Salisbury road, and standing just at that point, the church on one hand,
the old inn on the other, you can follow it with the eye for a distance
of nearly three miles. First it goes winding up the low down under which
the village stands, then vanishes over the brow to reappear again a mile
and a half further away as a white band on the vast green slope of the
succeeding down, which rises to a height of over 600 feet. On the summit
it vanishes once more, but those who use it know it for a laborious road
crossing several high ridges before dropping down into the valley road
leading to Salisbury.

When, standing in the village street, your eye travels up that white
band, you can distinctly make out even at that distance a small,
solitary tree standing near the summit--an old thorn with an ivy growing
on it. My walks were often that way, and invariably on coming to that
point I would turn twenty yards aside from the road to spend half an
hour seated on the turf near or under the old tree. These half-hours
were always grateful; and conscious that the tree drew me to it I
questioned myself as to the reason. It was, I told myself, nothing but
mental curiosity: my interest was a purely scientific one. For how comes
it, I asked, that a thorn can grow to a tree and live to a great age in
such a situation, on a vast, naked down, where for many centuries,
perhaps for thousands of years, the herbage has been so closely fed by
sheep as to have the appearance of a carpet, or newly mown lawn? The
seed is carried and scattered everywhere by the birds, but no sooner
does it germinate and send up a shoot than it is eaten down to the
roots; for there is no scent that attracts a sheep more, no flavour it
has greater taste for, than that of any forest seedling springing up
amidst the minute herbaceous plants which carpet the downs. The thorn,
like other organisms, has its own unconscious intelligence and cunning,
by means of which it endeavours to save itself and fulfil its life. It
opens its first tender leaves under the herbage, and at the same time
thrusts up a vertical spine to wound the nibbling mouth; and no sooner
has it got a leaf or two and a spine than it spreads its roots all
round, and from each of them springs a fresh shoot, leaves and
protecting spine, to increase the chances of preservation. In vain! the
cunning animal finds a way to defeat all this strategy, and after the
leaves have been bitten off again and again, the infant plant gives up
the struggle and dies in the ground. Yet we see that from time to time
one survives--one perhaps in a million; but how--whether by a quicker
growth or a harder or more poisonous thorn, an unpalatable leaf, or some
other secret agency--we cannot guess. First as a diminutive scrubby
shrub, with numerous iron-hard stems, with few and small leaves but many
thorns, it keeps its poor flowerless frustrate life for perhaps half a
century or longer, without growing more than a couple of feet high; and
then, as by a miracle, it will spring up until its top shoots are out of
reach of the browsing sheep, and in the end it becomes a tree with
spreading branches and fully developed leaves, and flowers and fruit in
their season.

One day I was visited by an artist from a distance who, when shown the
thorn, pronounced it a fine subject for his pencil, and while he made
his picture we talked about the hawthorn generally as compared with
other trees, and agreed that, except in its blossoming time when it is
merely pretty, it is the most engaging and perhaps the most beautiful of
our native trees. We said that it was the most _individual_ of trees,
that its variety was infinite, for you never find two alike, whether
growing in a forest, in groups, or masses, or alone. We were almost
lyrical in its praises. But the solitary thorn was always best, he said,
and this one was perhaps the best of all he had seen: strange and at the
same time decorative in its form, beautiful too in its appearance of
great age with unimpaired vigour and something more in its
expression--that elusive something which we find in some trees and don't
know how to explain.

Ah, yes, thought I, it was this appeal to the �sthetic faculty which
attracted me from the first, and not, as I had imagined, the mere
curiosity of the naturalist interested mainly and always in the _habits_
of living things, plant or animal.

Certainly the thorn had strangeness. Its appearance as to height was
deceptive; one would have guessed it eighteen feet; measuring it I was
surprised to find it only ten. It has four separate boles, springing
from one root, leaning a little away from each other, the thickest just
a foot in circumference. The branches are few, beginning at about five
feet from the ground, the foliage thin, the leaves throughout the summer
stained with grey, rust-red, and purple colour. Though so small and
exposed to the full fury of every wind that blows over that vast naked
down, it has yet an ivy growing on it--the strangest of the many strange
ivy-plants I have seen. It comes out of the ground as two ivy trunks on
opposite sides of the stoutest bole, but at a height of four feet from
the surface the two join and ascend the tree as one round iron-coloured
and iron-hard stem, which goes curving and winding snakewise among the
branches as if with the object of roping them to save them from being
torn off by the winds. Finally, rising to the top, the long serpent stem
opens out in a flat disc-shaped mass of close-packed branchlets and
twigs densely set with small round leaves, dark dull green and tough as
parchment. One could only suppose that thorn and ivy had been partners
from the beginning of life, and that the union was equally advantageous
to both.

The small ivy disc or platform on top of the tree was a favourite stand
and look-out for the downland birds. I seldom visited the spot without
disturbing some of them, now a little company of missel-thrushes, now a
crowd of starlings, then perhaps a dozen rooks, crowded together,
looking very big and conspicuous on their little platform.

Being curious to find out something about the age of the tree, I
determined to put the question to my old friend Malachi, aged
eighty-nine, who was born and had always lived in the parish and had
known the downs and probably every tree growing on them for miles around
from his earliest years. It was my custom to drop in of an evening and
sit with him, listening to his endless reminiscences of his young days.
That evening I spoke of the thorn, describing its position and
appearance, thinking that perhaps he had forgotten it. How long, I asked
him, had the thorn been there?

He was one of those men, usually of the labouring class, to be met with
in such lonely, out-of-the-world places as the Wiltshire Downs, whose
eyes never look old however many their years may be, and are more like
the eyes of a bird or animal than a human being, for they gaze at you
and through you when you speak without appearing to know what you say.
So it was on this occasion; he looked straight at me with no sign of
understanding, no change in his clear grey eyes, and answered nothing.
But I would not be put off, and when, raising my voice, I repeated the
question, he replied, after another interval of silence, that the thorn
"was never any different." 'Twas just the same, ivy and all, when he
were a small boy. It looked just so old; why, he remembered his old
father saying the same thing--'twas the same when he were a boy, and
'twas the same in his father's time. Then anxious to escape from the
subject he began talking of something else.

It struck me that after all the most interesting thing about the thorn
was its appearance of great age, and this aspect I had now been told had
continued for at least a century, probably for a much longer time. It
produced a reverent feeling in me such as we experience at the sight of
some ancient stone monument. But the tree was alive, and because of its
life the feeling was perhaps stronger than in the case of a granite
cross or cromlech or other memorial of antiquity.

Sitting by the thorn one day it occurred to me that, growing at this
spot close to the road and near the summit of that vast down, numberless
persons travelling to and from Salisbury must have turned aside to rest
on the turf in the shade after that laborious ascent or before beginning
the long descent to the valley below. Travellers of all conditions, on
foot or horseback, in carts and carriages, merchants, bagmen, farmers,
drovers, gipsies, tramps and vagrants of all descriptions, and from time
to time troops of soldiers. Yet never one of them had injured the tree
in any way! I could not remember ever finding a tree growing alone by
the roadside in a lonely place which had not the marks of many old and
new wounds inflicted on its trunk with knives, hatchets, and other
implements. Here not a mark, not a scratch had been made on any one of
its four trunks or on the ivy stem by any thoughtless or mischievous
person, nor had any branch been cut or broken off. Why had they one and
all respected this tree?

It was another subject to talk to Malachi about, and to him I went after
tea and found him with three of his neighbours sitting by the fire and
talking; for though it was summer the old man always had a fire in the
evening.

They welcomed and made room for me, but I had no sooner broached the
subject in my mind than they all fell into silence, then after a brief
interval the three callers began to discuss some little village matter.
I was not going to be put off in that way, and, leaving them out, went
on talking to Malachi about the tree. Presently one by one the three
visitors got up and, remarking that it was time to be going, they took
their departure.

The old man could not escape nor avoid listening, and in the end had to
say something. He said he didn't know nothing about all them tramps and
gipsies and other sorts of men who had sat by the tree; all he knowed
was that the old thorn had been a good thorn to him--first and last. He
remembered once when he was a young man, not yet twenty, he went to do
some work at a village five miles away, and being winter time he left
early, about four o'clock, to walk home over the downs. He had just got
married, and had promised his wife to be home for tea at six o'clock.
But a thick fog came up over the downs, and soon as it got dark he lost
himself. 'Twas the darkest, thickest night he had ever been out in; and
whenever he came against a bank or other obstruction he would get down
on his hands and knees and feel it up and down to get its shape and find
out what it was, for he knew all the marks on his native downs; 'twas
all in vain--nothing could he recognise. In this way he wandered about
for hours, and was in despair of getting home that night, when all at
once there came a sense of relief, a feeling that it was all right, that
something was guiding him.

I remarked that I knew what that meant: he had lost his sense of
direction and had now all at once recovered it; such a thing had often
happened; I once had such an experience myself.

No, it was not that, he returned. He had not gone a dozen steps from the
moment that sense of confidence came to him, before he ran into a tree,
and feeling the trunk with his hands he recognised it as the old thorn
and knew where he was. In a couple of minutes he was on the road, and in
less than an hour, just about midnight, he was safe at home.

No more could I get out of him, at all events on that occasion; nor did
I ever succeed in extracting any further personal experience in spite of
his having let out that the thorn had been a good thorn to him, first
and last. I had, however, heard enough to satisfy me that I had at
length discovered the real secret of the tree's fascination. I recalled
other trees which had similarly affected me, and how, long years ago,
when a good deal of my time was spent on horseback, whenever I found
myself in a certain district I would go miles out of my way just to look
at a solitary old tree growing in a lonely place, and to sit for an hour
to refresh myself, body and soul, in its shade. I had indeed all along
suspected the thorn of being one of this order of mysterious trees; and
from other experiences I had met with, one some years ago in a village
in this same county of Wilts, I had formed the opinion that in many
persons the sense of a strange intelligence and possibility of power in
such trees is not a mere transitory state but an enduring influence
which profoundly affects their whole lives.

Determined to find out something more, I went to other villagers, mostly
women, who are more easily disarmed and made to believe that you too
know and are of the same mind with them, being under the same mysterious
power and spell. In this way, laying many a subtle snare, I succeeded in
eliciting a good deal of information. It was, however, mostly of a kind
which could not profitably be used in any inquiry into the subject; it
simply went to show that the feeling existed and was strong in many of
the villagers. During this inquiry I picked up several anecdotes about a
person who lived in Ingden close upon three generations ago, and was
able to piece them together so as to make a consistent narrative of his
life. This was Johnnie Budd, a farm labourer, who came to his end in
1821, a year or so before my old friend Malachi was born. It is going
very far back, but there were circumstances in his life which made a
deep impression on the mind of that little community, and the story had
lived on through all these years.

II

Johnnie had fallen on hard times when in an exceptionally severe winter
season he with others had been thrown out of employment at the farm
where he worked; then with a wife and three small children to keep he
had in his desperation procured food for them one dark night in an
adjacent field. But alas! one of the little ones playing in the road
with some of her companions, who were all very hungry, let it out that
she wasn't hungry, that for three days she had had as much nice meat as
she wanted to eat! Play over, the hungry little ones flew home to tell
their parents the wonderful news--why didn't they have nice meat like
Tilly Budd, instead of a piece of rye bread without even dripping on it,
when they were so hungry? Much talk followed, and spread from cottage to
cottage until it reached the constable's ears, and he, already informed
of the loss of a wether taken from its fold close by, went straight to
Johnnie and charged him with the offence. Johnnie lost his head, and
dropping on his knees confessed his guilt and begged his old friend
Lampard to have mercy on him and to overlook it for the sake of his wife
and children.

It was his first offence, but when he was taken from the lock-up at the
top of the village street to be conveyed to Salisbury, his friends and
neighbours who had gathered at the spot to witness his removal shook
their heads and doubted that Ingden would ever see him again. The
confession had made the case so simple a one that he had at once been
committed to take his trial at the Salisbury Assizes, and as the time
was near the constable had been ordered to convey the prisoner to the
town himself. Accordingly he engaged old Joe Blaskett, called Daddy in
the village, to take them in his pony cart. Daddy did not want the job,
but was talked or bullied into it, and there he now sat in his cart,
waiting in glum silence for his passengers; a bent old man of eighty,
with a lean, grey, bitter face, in his rusty cloak, his old rabbit-skin
cap drawn down over his ears, his white disorderly beard scattered over
his chest. The constable Lampard was a big, powerful man, with a great
round, good-natured face, but just now he had a strong sense of
responsibility, and to make sure of not losing his prisoner he
handcuffed him before bringing him out and helping him to take his seat
on the bottom of the cart. Then he got up himself to his seat by the
driver's side; the last good-bye was spoken, the weeping wife being
gently led away by her friends, and the cart rattled away down the
street. Turning into the Salisbury road it was soon out of sight over
the near down, but half an hour later it emerged once more into sight
beyond the great dip, and the villagers who had remained standing about
at the same spot watched it crawling like a beetle up the long white
road on the slope of the vast down beyond.

Johnnie was now lying coiled up on his rug, his face hidden between his
arms, abandoned to grief, sobbing aloud. Lampard, sitting athwart the
seat so as to keep an eye on him, burst out at last: "Be a man, Johnnie,
and stop your crying! 'Tis making things no better by taking on like
that. What do you say, Daddy?"

"I say nought," snapped the old man, and for a while they proceeded in
silence except for those heartrending sobs. As they approached the old
thorn tree, near the top of the long slope, Johnnie grew more and more
agitated, his whole frame shaking with his sobbing. Again the constable
rebuked him, telling him that 'twas a shame for a man to go on like
that. Then with an effort he restrained his sobs, and lifting a red,
swollen, tear-stained face he stammered out: "Master Lampard, did I ever
ask 'ee a favour in my life?"

"What be after now?" said the other suspiciously. "Well, no, Johnnie,
not as I remember."

"An' do 'ee think I'll ever come back home again, Master Lampard?"

"Maybe no, maybe yes; 'tis not for me to say."

"But 'ee knows 'tis a hanging matter?"

"'Tis that for sure. But you be a young man with a wife and childer, and
have never done no wrong before--not that I ever heard say. Maybe the
judge'll recommend you to mercy. What do you say, Daddy?"

The old man only made some inarticulate sounds in his beard, without
turning his head.

"But, Master Lampard, suppose I don't swing, they'll send I over the
water and I'll never see the wife and children no more."

"Maybe so; I'm thinking that's how 'twill be."

"Then will 'ee do me a kindness? 'Tis the only one I ever asked 'ee, and
there'll be no chance to ask 'ee another."

"I can't say, Johnnie, not till I know what 'tis you want."

"'Tis only this, Master Lampard. When we git to th' old thorn let me out
o' the cart and let me stand under it one minnit and no more."

"Be you wanting to hang yourself before the trial then?" said the
constable, trying to make a joke of it.

"I couldn't do that," said Johnnie, simply, "seeing my hands be fast and
you'd be standing by."

"No, no, Johnnie, 'tis nought but just foolishness. What do you say,
Daddy?"

The old man turned round with a look of sudden rage in his grey face
which startled Lampard; but he said nothing, he only opened and shut his
mouth two or three times without a sound.

Meanwhile the pony had been going slower and slower for the last thirty
or forty yards, and now when they were abreast of the tree stood still.

"What be stopping for?" cried Lampard. "Get on--get on, or we'll never
get to Salisbury this day."

Then at length old Blaskett found a voice.

"Does thee know what thee's saying, Master Lampard, or be thee a
stranger in this parish?"

"What d'ye mean, Daddy? I be no stranger; I've a-known this parish and
known 'ee these nine years."

"Thee asked why I stopped when 'twas the pony stopped, knowing where
we'd got to. But thee's not born here or thee'd a-known what a hoss
knows. An' since 'ee asks what I says, I say this, 'twill not hurt 'ee
to let Johnnie Budd stand one minute by the tree."

Feeling insulted and puzzled the constable was about to assert his
authority when he was arrested by Johnnie's cry, "Oh, Master Lampard,
'tis my last hope!" and by the sight of the agony of suspense on his
swollen face. After a short hesitation he swung himself out over the
side of the cart, and letting down the tailboard laid rough hands on
Johnnie and half helped, half dragged him out.

They were quickly by the tree, where Johnnie stood silent with downcast
eyes a few moments; then dropping upon his knees leant his face against
the bark, his eyes closed, his lips murmuring.

"Time's up!" cried Lampard presently, and taking him by the collar
pulled him to his feet; in a couple of minutes more they were in the
cart and on their way.

It was grey weather, very cold, with an east wind blowing, but for the
rest of that dreary thirteen-miles journey Johnnie was very quiet and
submissive and shed no more tears.

III

What had been his motive in wishing to stand by the tree? What did he
expect when he said it was his last hope? During the way up the long,
laborious slope, an incident of his early years in connection with the
tree had been in his mind, and had wrought on him until it culminated in
that passionate outburst and his strange request. It was when he was a
boy, not quite ten years old, that, one afternoon in the summer time, he
went with other children to look for wild raspberries on the summit of
the great down. Johnnie, being the eldest, was the leader of the little
band. On the way back from the brambly place where the fruit grew, on
approaching the thorn, they spied a number of rooks sitting on it, and
it came into Johnnie's mind that it would be great fun to play at crows
by sitting on the branches as near the top as they could get. Running
on, with cries that sent the rooks cawing away, they began swarming up
the trunks, but in the midst of their frolic, when they were all
struggling for the best places on the branches, they were startled by a
shout, and looking up to the top of the down, saw a man on horseback
coming towards them at a gallop, shaking a whip in anger as he rode.
Instantly they began scrambling down, falling over each other in their
haste, then, picking themselves up, set off down the slope as fast as
they could run. Johnnie was foremost, while close behind him came Marty,
who was nearly the same age and, though a girl, almost as swift-footed,
but before going fifty yards she struck her foot against an ant-hill and
was thrown violently, face down, on the turf. Johnnie turned at her cry
and flew back to help her up, but the shock of the fall, and her extreme
terror, had deprived her for the moment of all strength, and while he
struggled to raise her, the smaller children, one by one, overtook and
passed them, and in another moment the man was off his horse, standing
over them.

"Do you want a good thrashing?" he said, grasping Johnnie by the collar.

"Oh, sir; please don't hit me!" answered Johnnie; then looking up he was
astonished to see that his captor was not the stern old farmer, the
tenant of the down, he had taken him for, but a stranger and a
strange-looking man, in a dark grey cloak with a red collar. He had a
pointed beard and long black hair and dark eyes that were not evil yet
frightened Johnnie, when he caught them gazing down on him.

"No, I'll not thrash you," said he, "because you stayed to help the
little maiden, but I'll tell you something for your good about the tree
you and your little mates have been climbing, bruising the bark with
your heels and breaking off leaves and twigs. Do you know, boy, that if
you hurt it, it will hurt you? It stands fast here with its roots in the
ground and you--you can go away from it, you think. 'Tis not so;
something will come out of it and follow you wherever you go and hurt
and break you at last. But if you make it a friend and care for it, it
will care for you and give you happiness and deliver you from evil."

Then touching Johnnie's cheeks with his gloved hand he got on his horse
and rode away, and no sooner was he gone than Marty started up, and hand
in hand the two children set off at a run down the long slope.

Johnnie's playtime was nearly over then, for by and by he was taken as
farmer's boy at one of the village farms. When he was nineteen years
old, one Sunday evening, when standing in the road with other young
people of the village, youths and girls, it was powerfully borne on his
mind that his old playmate Marty was not only the prettiest and best
girl in the place, but that she had something which set her apart and
far, far above all other women. For now, after having known her
intimately from his first years, he had suddenly fallen in love with
her, a feeling which caused him to shiver in a kind of ecstasy, yet made
him miserable, since it had purged his sight and made him see, too, how
far apart they were and how hopeless his case. It was true they had been
comrades from childhood, fond of each other, but she had grown and
developed until she had become that most bright and lovely being, while
he had remained the same slow-witted, awkward, almost inarticulate
Johnnie he had always been. This feeling preyed on his poor mind, and
when he joined the evening gathering in the village street he noted
bitterly how contemptuously he was left out of the conversation by the
others, how incapable he was of keeping pace with them in their laughing
talk and banter. And, worst of all, how Marty was the leading spirit,
bandying words and bestowing smiles and pleasantries all round, but
never a word or a smile for him. He could not endure it, and so instead
of smartening himself up after work and going for company to the village
street, he would walk down the secluded lane near the farm to spend the
hour before supper and bedtime sitting on a gate, brooding on his
misery; and if by chance he met Marty in the village he would try to
avoid her, and was silent and uncomfortable in her presence.

After work, one hot summer evening, Johnnie was walking along the road
near the farm in his working clothes, clay-coloured boots, and old dusty
hat, when who should he see but Marty coming towards him, looking very
sweet and fresh in her light-coloured print gown. He looked to this side
and that for some friendly gap or opening in the hedge so as to take
himself out of the road, but there was no way of escape at that spot,
and he had to pass her, and so casting down his eyes he walked on,
wishing he could sink into the earth out of her sight. But she would not
allow him to pass; she put herself directly in his way and spoke.

"What's the matter with 'ee, Johnnie, that 'ee don't want to meet me and
hardly say a word when I speak to 'ee?"

He could not find a word in reply; he stood still, his face crimson, his
eyes on the ground.

"Johnnie, dear, what is it?" she asked, coming closer and putting her
hand on his arm.

Then he looked up, and seeing the sweet compassion in her eyes, he could
no longer keep the secret of his pain from her.

"'Tis 'ee, Marty," he said. "Thee'll never want I--there's others 'ee'll
like better. 'Tisn't for I to say a word about that, I'm thinking, for I
be--just nothing. An'--an'--I be going away from the village, Marty, and
I'll never come back no more."

"Oh, Johnnie, don't 'ee say it! Would 'ee go and break my heart? Don't
'ee know I've always loved 'ee since we were little mites together?"

And thus it came about that Johnnie, most miserable of men, was all at
once made happy beyond his wildest dreams. And he proved himself worthy
of her; from that time there was not a more diligent and sober young
labourer in the village, nor one of a more cheerful disposition, nor
more careful of his personal appearance when, the day's work done, the
young people had their hour of social intercourse and courting. Yet he
was able to put by a portion of his weekly wages of six shillings to buy
sticks, so that when spring came round again he was able to marry and
take Marty to live with him in his own cottage.

One Sunday afternoon, shortly after this happy event, they went out for
a walk on the high down.

"Oh, Johnnie, 'tis a long time since we were here together, not since we
used to come and play and look for cowslips when we were little."

Johnnie laughed with pure joy and said they would just be children and
play again, now they were alone and out of sight of the village; and
when she smiled up at him he rejoiced to think that his union with this
perfect girl was producing a happy effect on his poor brains, making him
as bright and ready with a good reply as any one. And in their happiness
they played at being children just as in the old days they had played at
being grown-ups. Casting themselves down on the green, elastic,
flower-sprinkled turf, they rolled one after the other down the smooth
slopes of the terrace, the old "shepherd's steps," and by and by
Johnnie, coming upon a patch of creeping thyme, rubbed his hands in the
pale purple flowers, then rubbed her face to make it fragrant.

"Oh, 'tis sweet!" she cried. "Did 'ee ever see so many little flowers on
the down?--'tis as if they came out just for us." Then, indicating the
tiny milkwort faintly sprinkling the turf all about them, "Oh, the
little blue darlings! Did 'ee ever see such a dear blue?"

"Oh, aye, a prettier blue nor that," said Johnnie. "'Tis just here,
Marty," and pressing her down he kissed her on the eyelids a dozen
times.

"You silly Johnnie!"

"Be I silly, Marty? but I love the red too," and with that he kissed her
on the mouth. "And, Marty, I do love the red on the breasties too--won't
'ee let me have just one kiss there?"

And she, to please him, opened her dress a little way, but blushingly,
though she was his wife and nobody was there to see, but it seemed
strange to her out of doors with the sun overhead. Oh, 'twas all
delicious! Never was earth so heavenly sweet as on that wide green down,
sprinkled with innumerable little flowers, under the wide blue sky and
the all-illuminating sun that shone into their hearts!

At length, rising to her knees and looking up the green slope, she cried
out: "Oh, Johnnie, there's the old thorn tree! Do 'ee remember when we
played at crows on it and had such a fright? 'Twas the last time we came
here together. Come, let's go to the old tree and see how it looks now."

Johnnie all at once became grave, and said No, he wouldn't go to it for
anything. She was curious and made him tell her the reason. He had never
forgotten that day and the fear that came into his mind on account of
the words the strange man had spoken. She didn't know what the words
were; she had been too frightened to listen, and so he had to tell her.

"Then, 'tis a wishing-tree for sure," Marty exclaimed. When he asked her
what a wishing-tree was, she could only say that her old grandmother,
now dead, had told her. 'Tis a tree that knows us and can do us good and
harm, but will do good only to some; but they must go to it and ask for
its protection, and they must offer it something as well as pray to it.
It must be something bright--a little jewel or coloured bead is best,
and if you haven't got such a thing, a bright-coloured ribbon, or strip
of scarlet cloth or silk thread--which you must tie to one of the twigs.

"But we hurted the tree, Marty, and 'twill do no good to we."

They were both grave now; then a hopeful thought came to her aid. They
had not hurt the tree intentionally; the tree knew that--it knew more
than any human being. They might go and stand side by side under its
branches and ask it to forgive them, and grant them all their desires.
But they must not go empty-handed, they must have some bright thing with
them when making their prayer. Then she had a fresh inspiration. She
would take a lock of her own bright hair, and braid it with some of his,
and tie it with a piece of scarlet thread.

Johnnie was pleased with this idea, and they agreed to take another
Sunday afternoon walk and carry out their plan.

The projected walk was never taken, for by and by Marty's mother fell
ill, and Marty had to be with her, nursing her night and day. And months
went by, and at length, when her mother died, she was not in a fit
condition to go long walks and climb those long, steep slopes. After the
child was born, it was harder than ever to leave the house, and Johnnie,
too, had so much work at the farm that he had little inclination to go
out on Sundays. They ceased to speak of the tree, and their
long-projected pilgrimage was impracticable until they could see better
days. But the wished time never came, for, after the first child, Marty
was never strong. Then a second child came, then a third; and so five
years went by, of toil and suffering and love, and the tree, with all
their hopes and fears and intentions regarding it, was less and less in
their minds, and was all but forgotten. Only Johnnie, when at long
intervals his master sent him to Salisbury with the cart, remembered it
all only too well when, coming to the top of the down, he saw the old
thorn directly before him. Passing it, he would turn his face away not
to see it too closely, or, perhaps, to avoid being recognised by it.
Then came the time of their extreme poverty, when there was no work at
the farm and no one of their own people to help tide them over a season
of scarcity, for the old people were dead or in the workhouse or so poor
as to want help themselves. It was then that, in his misery at the sight
of his ailing anxious wife--the dear Marty of the beautiful vanished
days--and his three little hungry children, that he went out into the
field one dark night to get them food.

The whole sad history was in his mind as they slowly crawled up the
hill, until it came to him that perhaps all their sufferings and this
great disaster had been caused by the tree--by that something from the
tree which had followed him, never resting in its mysterious enmity
until it broke him. Was it too late to repair that terrible mistake? A
gleam of hope shone on his darkened mind, and he made his passionate
appeal to the constable. He had no offering--his hands were powerless
now; but at least he could stand by it and touch it with his body and
face and pray for its forgiveness, and for deliverance from the doom
which threatened him. The constable had compassionately, or from some
secret motive, granted his request; but alas! if in very truth the power
he had come to believe in resided in the tree, he was too late in
seeking it.

The trial was soon over; by pleading guilty Johnnie had made it a very
simple matter for the court. The main thing was to sentence him. By an
unhappy chance the judge was in one of his occasional bad moods; he had
been entertained too well by one of the local magnates on the previous
evening and had sat late, drinking too much wine, with the result that
he had a bad liver, with a mind to match it. He was only too ready to
seize the first opportunity that offered--and poor Johnnie's case was
the first that morning--of exercising the awful power a barbarous law
had put into his hands. When the prisoner's defender declared that this
was a case which called loudly for mercy, the judge interrupted him to
say that he was taking too much upon himself, that he was, in fact,
instructing the judge in his duties, which was a piece of presumption on
his part. The other was quick to make a humble apology and to bring his
perfunctory address to a conclusion. The judge, in addressing the
prisoner, said he had been unable to discover any extenuating
circumstances in the case. The fact that he had a wife and family
dependent on him only added to his turpitude, since it proved that no
consideration could serve to deter him from a criminal act. Furthermore,
in dealing with this case, he must take into account the prevalence of
this particular form of crime; he would venture to say that it had been
encouraged by an extreme leniency in many cases on the part of those
whose sacred duty it was to administer the law of the land. A sterner
and healthier spirit was called for at the present juncture. The time
had come to make an example, and a more suitable case than the one now
before him could not have been found for such a purpose. He would
accordingly hold out no hope of a reprieve, but would counsel prisoner
to make the best use of the short time remaining to him.

Johnnie standing in the dock appeared to the spectators to be in a
half-dazed condition--as dull and spiritless a clodhopper as they had
ever beheld. The judge and barristers, in their wigs and robes and
gowns, were unlike any human beings he had ever looked on. He might have
been transported to some other world, so strange did the whole scene
appear to him. He only knew, or surmised, that all these important
people were occupied in doing him to death, but the process, the meaning
of their fine phrases, he could not follow. He looked at them, his
glazed eyes travelling from face to face, to be fixed finally on the
judge, in a vacant stare; but he scarcely saw them, he was all the time
gazing on, and his mind occupied with, other forms and scenes invisible
to the court. His village, his Marty, his dear little playmate of long
ago, the sweet girl he had won, the wife and mother of his children,
with her white, terrified face, clinging to him and crying in anguish:
"Oh, Johnnie, what will they do to 'ee?" And all the time, with it all,
he saw the vast green slope of the down, with the Salisbury road lying
like a narrow white band across it, and close to it, near the summit,
the solitary old tree.

During the delivery of the sentence, and when he was led from the dock
and conveyed back to the prison, that image or vision was still present.
He sat staring at the wall of his cell as he had stared at the judge,
the fatal tree still before him. Never before had he seen it in that
vivid way in which it appeared to him now, standing alone on the vast
green down, under the wide sky, its four separate boles leaning a little
way from each other, like the middle ribs of an open fan, holding up the
widespread branches, the thin, open foliage, the green leaves stained
with rusty brown and purple; and the ivy, rising like a slender black
serpent of immense length, springing from the roots, winding upwards,
and in and out, among the grey branches, binding them together, and
resting its round, dark cluster of massed leaves on the topmost boughs.
That green disc was the ivy-serpent's flat head and was the head of the
whole tree, and there it had its eyes, which gazed for ever over the
wide downs, watching all living things, cattle and sheep and birds and
men in their comings and goings; and although fast-rooted in the earth,
following them, too, in all their ways, even as it had followed him, to
break him at last.

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