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.
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