e workhouse or so poor
as to want help themselves. It was then that, in his misery at the sight
of his ailing anxious wife--the dear Marty of the beautiful vanished
days--and his three little hungry children, that he went out into the
field one dark night to get them food.

The whole sad history was in his mind as they slowly crawled up the
hill, until it came to him that perhaps all their sufferings and this
great disaster had been caused by the tree--by that something from the
tree which had followed him, never resting in its mysterious enmity
until it broke him. Was it too late to repair that terrible mistake? A
gleam of hope shone on his darkened mind, and he made his passionate
appeal to the constable. He had no offering--his hands were powerless
now; but at least he could stand by it and touch it with his body and
face and pray for its forgiveness, and for deliverance from the doom
which threatened him. The constable had compassionately, or from some
secret motive, granted his request; but alas! if in very truth the power
he had come to believe in resided in the tree, he was too late in
seeking it.

The trial was soon over; by pleading guilty Johnnie had made it a very
simple matter for the court. The main thing was to sentence him. By an
unhappy chance the judge was in one of his occasional bad moods; he had
been entertained too well by one of the local magnates on the previous
evening and had sat late, drinking too much wine, with the result that
he had a bad liver, with a mind to match it. He was only too ready to
seize the first opportunity that offered--and poor Johnnie's case was
the first that morning--of exercising the awful power a barbarous law
had put into his hands. When the prisoner's defender declared that this
was a case which called loudly for mercy, the judge interrupted him to
say that he was taking too much upon himself, that he was, in fact,
instructing the judge in his duties, which was a piece of presumption on
his part. The other was quick to make a humble apology and to bring his
perfunctory address to a conclusion. The judge, in addressing the
prisoner, said he had been unable to discover any extenuating
circumstances in the case. The fact that he had a wife and family
dependent on him only added to his turpitude, since it proved that no
consideration could serve to deter him from a criminal act. Furthermore,
in dealing with this case, he must take into account the prevalence of
this par