from the feoffees to put up the fence that doth now
so sorely vex us, I found one day a great acorn, as big as a dow's
egg, and of a rich and wondrous brown, and this acorn I bore home and
planted in kind earth in the corner of my dad's garden, thinking that
it would grow, and that one day I would hew its growth and use it for
a staff. Now that was fifty long years ago, lads, and there where grew
Prior's Oak, there, neighbours, I have set my Staff to-day. The monks
have told us how in Israel every man planted his fig and his vine. For
the fig I know not rightly what that is; but for the vine, I will
plant no creeping, clinging vine, but a hearty English oak, that, if
they do but give it good room to breathe in, and save their heirloom
from the axe, shall cast shade and grow acorns, and burst into leaf in
the spring and grow naked in the winter, when ten generations of our
children, and our children's children, shall have mixed their dust
with ours yonder in the graveyard. And now, neighbours, I have talked
too long, though I am better at doing than talking; but ye will even
forgive me, for I will not talk to you again, though on this the great
day of my life I was minded to speak. But I will bid you every man
pledge a health to the Caresfoot's Staff, and ask a prayer that, so
long as it shall push its leaves, so long may the race of my loins be
here to sit beneath its shade, and even mayhap when the corn is ripe
and the moon is up, and their hearts grow soft towards the past, to
talk with kinsman or with sweetheart of the old man who struck it in
this kindly soil.'"

The old squire's face grew tender as he told this legend of the
forgotten dead, and Philip's young imagination summoned up the strange
old-world scene of the crowd of rustics gathered in the snow and frost
round this very tree.

"Philip," said his father, suddenly, "you will hold the yeoman's Staff
one day; be like it of an oaken English heart, and you will defy wind
and weather as it has done, and as your forbears have done. Come, we
must go on."

"By the way, Philip," he continued, after a while, "you will remember
what I said to you this morning--I hope that you will remember it,
though I spoke in anger--never try to deceive me again, or you will
regret it. And now I have something to say to you. I wish you to go to
college and receive an education that will fit you to hold the
position you must in the course of Nature one day fill in the county.
Th