s, but I didn't see one yesterday. "The swallows are gone,"
I said; "the wild geese will soon be here," and I remembered their
doleful cry as I scrambled under some blackthorn bushes, glad to get out
of the wood into the fields. Though I knew the field I was in well, I
didn't remember the young sycamores growing in one corner of it.
Yesterday I could not but notice them, for they seemed to be like
children dying of consumption in a hospital ward--girls of twelve or
thirteen. You will think the comparison far-fetched and unhealthy, one
that could only come out of a morbidly excited imagination. Well, I
cannot help that; like you, I must write as I feel.

'Suddenly I heard the sound of an axe, and I can find no words to tell
you how impressive its sound was in the still autumn day. "How soon
will the tree fall?" I thought; and, desirous of seeing it fall, I
walked on, guided by the sound, till I saw at the end of the glade--whom
do you think? Do you remember an old man called Patsy Murphy? He had
once been a very good carpenter, and had made and saved money. But he is
now ninety-five, and I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw him
trying to cut down a larch. What his object could be in felling the tree
I could not tell, and, feeling some curiosity, I walked forward. He
continued to chip away pieces of the bark till his strength failed him,
and he had to sit down to rest. Seeing me, he took off his hat--you know
the tall hat he wears--a hat given him twenty or thirty years ago by
whom? Patsy Murphy's mind is beginning to wander. He tells stories as
long as you will listen to him, and it appears now that his
daughter-in-law turned him out of his house--the house he had built
himself, and that he had lived in for half a century. This, however, is
not the greatest wrong she had done him. He could forgive her this
wrong, but he cannot forgive her stealing of his sword. "There never was
a Murphy," he said, "who hadn't a sword." Whether this sword is an
imagination of Patsy's fading brain, I cannot say; perhaps he had some
old sword and lost it. The tale he tells to-day differs wholly from the
tale he told yesterday and the tale he will tell to-morrow. He told me
once he had been obliged to give up all his savings to his son. I went
to interview the son, determined to sift the matter to the bottom, and
discovered that Patsy had still one hundred and twenty pounds in the
bank. Ten pounds had been taken out for--I needn't troubl