leaves and twigs. Do you know, boy, that if
you hurt it, it will hurt you? It stands fast here with its roots in the
ground and you--you can go away from it, you think. 'Tis not so;
something will come out of it and follow you wherever you go and hurt
and break you at last. But if you make it a friend and care for it, it
will care for you and give you happiness and deliver you from evil."

Then touching Johnnie's cheeks with his gloved hand he got on his horse
and rode away, and no sooner was he gone than Marty started up, and hand
in hand the two children set off at a run down the long slope.

Johnnie's playtime was nearly over then, for by and by he was taken as
farmer's boy at one of the village farms. When he was nineteen years
old, one Sunday evening, when standing in the road with other young
people of the village, youths and girls, it was powerfully borne on his
mind that his old playmate Marty was not only the prettiest and best
girl in the place, but that she had something which set her apart and
far, far above all other women. For now, after having known her
intimately from his first years, he had suddenly fallen in love with
her, a feeling which caused him to shiver in a kind of ecstasy, yet made
him miserable, since it had purged his sight and made him see, too, how
far apart they were and how hopeless his case. It was true they had been
comrades from childhood, fond of each other, but she had grown and
developed until she had become that most bright and lovely being, while
he had remained the same slow-witted, awkward, almost inarticulate
Johnnie he had always been. This feeling preyed on his poor mind, and
when he joined the evening gathering in the village street he noted
bitterly how contemptuously he was left out of the conversation by the
others, how incapable he was of keeping pace with them in their laughing
talk and banter. And, worst of all, how Marty was the leading spirit,
bandying words and bestowing smiles and pleasantries all round, but
never a word or a smile for him. He could not endure it, and so instead
of smartening himself up after work and going for company to the village
street, he would walk down the secluded lane near the farm to spend the
hour before supper and bedtime sitting on a gate, brooding on his
misery; and if by chance he met Marty in the village he would try to
avoid her, and was silent and uncomfortable in her presence.

After work, one hot summer evening, Johnnie was w