rturbed, walking up and down by himself.

"You don't need to tell me!" said the boy, with a quick and agitated
gesture of the hand. "Bates told me. Old Mrs. Prettyman's dead!" His
merry, square-set face was changed and looked actually haggard, and
his eyes searched Lavendar's with an expression oddly different from
their usual fearless and straightforward one. They seemed afraid. "Was
it my grandmother's--was it our fault?" he asked. "I, I feel like a
murderer. Upon my soul, I do!"

"Don't encourage morbid ideas, my dear fellow!" said Lavendar in a
matter-of-fact tone. "There's trouble enough in the world without
foolish exaggeration. Mrs. Prettyman was 'grave-ripe,' as she often
said to your cousin; a very feeble old woman, whose time had come. The
doctor's certificate will tell you how rheumatism had affected her
heart, and the neighbours would very soon set your mind at rest by
describing the number of times poor old Lizzie had nearly died
before."

"Think of it, though!" said Carnaby with wondering eyes. "Think of her
lying dead in the cottage while I hacked and hewed at the plum tree
just outside! By Jove! it makes a fellow feel queer!" He shuddered.
The picture he evoked was certainly a strange one enough: a strange
picture in the moonlight of a night in spring; the doomed beauty of
the blossoming tree, the blind, headstrong human energy working for
its destruction, and Death over all, stealthy and strong!

"What an ass I was!" said Carnaby, summing up the situation in the
only language in which he could express himself. "Sweating and stewing
and hacking away--thinking myself so awfully clever! And all the time
things ... things were being arranged in quite a different manner!"

"We are often made to feel our insignificance in ways like this,"
said Lavendar. "We are very small atoms, Carnaby, in the path of the
great forces that sweep us on."

"I should rather think so!" assented the wondering boy. "And yet, can
a fellow sit tight all the time and just wait till things happen?"

"Ask me something else!" suggested Lavendar ironically.

There was a short pause. "I'm awfully sorry old Mrs. Prettyman's
dead," Carnaby said in a very subdued tone. "I meant to do a lot for
her, to try and make up for my grandmother's being such a beast." He
stopped short, and to Lavendar's astonishment, his face worked, and
two tears squeezed themselves out of his eyes and rolled over his
round cheeks as they might have done ove