When Life Was Young: At the Old Farm in Maine

by C. A. Stephens

But on the way he took second thought, and craft entered his heart. "I won't tell them where it is," he said to himself. "Let them hunt. They never will find it." For the place was a mile and a half or two miles from the nearest farm.

Willis as yet had not thought of selling the apples or making a profit from his discovery; that idea came into his mind later, after he found how fond every one was of them. But that night when asked where this tree grew, Willis laughed and said darkly, "Oh, I know!"

Such secretiveness was deemed piggish, and was resented. Several declared that they could and would find that tree and get every apple on it. Willis laughed and said, "Let me know when you do."

That was the beginning of the long search for "Willis Murch's good tree." First and last, hours, days and, altogether, weeks of time were spent scouring the pastures, fields and clearings. Willis was watched constantly, in the hope of tracking him.

Alfred Batchelder lay in wait for days together on a hill overlooking the Murch farm, expecting to see Willis set out for the tree. At one time Alfred and another boy, named Charles Cross, had thoughts of waylaying Willis, and extorting the secret from him by threats or torture!

Willis steered clear of them, however, and remained close-mouthed. He had grown very crafty, and went to the tree by night only, or sometimes early on Sunday mornings, before other people were astir.

During the August moon of the second season after discovering the tree, he brought home a bushel of the apples on three different occasions by night; and he now began canvassing among the farmers who had orchards, to sell scions, to be delivered in May of the following spring. After eating the apples, not a few signed for them at fifty cents a graft.

It required a fair share of courage on the part of a boy of fifteen to go to the tree by night, for the distance from Willis's home was fully two miles; and at that time bears and lynxes frequented the "great pasture."

Willis afterward told the other boys that a bear came out in the path directly ahead of him one night, as he was hurrying home with a bushel of Wild Rose Sweetings on his shoulder. The creature sniffed, and Willis shouted to frighten it. He was on the point of throwing down his apples, to climb a tree in haste, when the bear shambled away.

Willis seems now to have had great designs of selling scions to orchardists and nurserymen over the whole country. Only a tiny twig, three inches long, is requisite for a scion for grafting into other trees. The Wild Rose Sweeting tree would produce thousands of such scions. Willis, who was a Yankee lad by ancestry, resolved to preserve the secret of the tree at all hazards. He appears to have had dreams of making a fortune from it.