w. Travellers of all conditions, on
foot or horseback, in carts and carriages, merchants, bagmen, farmers,
drovers, gipsies, tramps and vagrants of all descriptions, and from time
to time troops of soldiers. Yet never one of them had injured the tree
in any way! I could not remember ever finding a tree growing alone by
the roadside in a lonely place which had not the marks of many old and
new wounds inflicted on its trunk with knives, hatchets, and other
implements. Here not a mark, not a scratch had been made on any one of
its four trunks or on the ivy stem by any thoughtless or mischievous
person, nor had any branch been cut or broken off. Why had they one and
all respected this tree?

It was another subject to talk to Malachi about, and to him I went after
tea and found him with three of his neighbours sitting by the fire and
talking; for though it was summer the old man always had a fire in the
evening.

They welcomed and made room for me, but I had no sooner broached the
subject in my mind than they all fell into silence, then after a brief
interval the three callers began to discuss some little village matter.
I was not going to be put off in that way, and, leaving them out, went
on talking to Malachi about the tree. Presently one by one the three
visitors got up and, remarking that it was time to be going, they took
their departure.

The old man could not escape nor avoid listening, and in the end had to
say something. He said he didn't know nothing about all them tramps and
gipsies and other sorts of men who had sat by the tree; all he knowed
was that the old thorn had been a good thorn to him--first and last. He
remembered once when he was a young man, not yet twenty, he went to do
some work at a village five miles away, and being winter time he left
early, about four o'clock, to walk home over the downs. He had just got
married, and had promised his wife to be home for tea at six o'clock.
But a thick fog came up over the downs, and soon as it got dark he lost
himself. 'Twas the darkest, thickest night he had ever been out in; and
whenever he came against a bank or other obstruction he would get down
on his hands and knees and feel it up and down to get its shape and find
out what it was, for he knew all the marks on his native downs; 'twas
all in vain--nothing could he recognise. In this way he wandered about
for hours, and was in despair of getting home that night, when all at
once there came a sense of re