That done, they went home in great glee, thrust the apples in Willis's face, and bade him look to his good tree.
"We have found your tree, old Cuffy!" they cried to him. "You never will get any more apples off that tree!"
Beyond doubt Willis was chagrined. He did not know that they had girdled the tree, but he thought it not worth the while to go up there again that fall, since there were no more apples. Yet even if Alfred and Newman had found it, and even if they got the apples next season, he supposed that he would still be able to cut scions from the tree. Late in March, directly after the sap started, he went up there with knife and saw to secure them.
Not till then did he discover that the tree had been cruelly girdled, and that the spring sap had not flowed to the limbs. He cut a bundle of scions, some of which were afterward set as grafts; but none of them lived. The tree was killed. It never bore again. Nor can I learn that sprouts ever came up about the root. It was quite dead when I first visited the place.
Thus perished, untimely, the Wild Rose Sweeting. Ignorance and small malice robbed the world of an apple that might have given delight and benefit to millions of people for centuries to come.
I have sometimes thought that an inscription of the nature of an epitaph should be cut on the great rock at the foot of which the tree stood.