“It is not nonsense. There is a great deal in it. The song goes on without an end, always the same; just as at the end of the psalm, ’As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.‘ See!’this is what I have to show you.”
She pointed to some lettering that ran round the white peeled trunk, brown as coffee; somewhat large and strained the characters seemed, and Rose was not able to decipher them, but she said’
“However came letters to be there, under the bark?”
“That is the great curiosity,” answered Kate. “Someone cut them in the bark with his knife when the tree was young, two hundred years ago. The tree has grown big since then, and has healed up its wounds, but still bears the scars; and it has drawn its bark round it, and for years upon years has hidden what was written from the eyes of man. Only now that the dear old oak is hewn down, and the bark stripped away, is the writing revealed which was cut on it two hundred years ago.”
“What are the words?”
“Listen’I have spelled them out.
’O Tree defying Time
Witness bear
That two loving Hearts
1643