She came and listened too, to hear what it was that had so moved her pretty Lois, that the tears were in her eyes; both she and Roger were holding Willie's hands and looking with kindly pity into the old man's face.
But the busy wife and mother, full of life's joys and cares, could see nothing to cry about in a story of what had come and gone so many years ago.
Only she listened patiently to the end, because she too loved Wandering Willie.
PART II.
Who is the honest man?
He that does still and strongly good pursue,
To God, his neighbour, and himself most true;
Whom neither force nor fawning can
Unpinne, or wrench from giving all their due.
George Herbert.
A great oak in Wyncliffe Chase was doomed to be cut down.
It was a goodly, wide-spreading tree, too wide-spreading indeed, for some of its branches came in the way of a certain forest-king, a huge-limbed mighty giant among trees, within whose stately area of space no neighbour was allowed to trespass. So the younger tree was to come down.
It met its fate on a sparkling autumn day. There was just a touch of sharpness in the air. The woods were mostly green still, though already plenty of red and brown and yellow patches told that autumn was upon us. The horse-chestnuts shining on the ground near their empty white shells, and the crimson and purple leaves of the bramble-bushes belonged to autumn too.
Now it is the old story. I have forgotten the great things and remembered the small. Nine years or more had passed since Caleb Morton's marriage. We had been growing up all this time, and changing by little and little, outwardly and inwardly. We left school and set about our business in life—Cuthbert became second forester under Clifford, Hildred's brother, and I had lately begun to be old Farmer Foster's bailiff at Furzy Nook.
How all these changes came about by degrees I have well-nigh forgotten. But I remember quite well the pheasants crowing in the wood that day, and the dead gold fern, and the voices that talked and laughed round the falling tree.