for joy.
Then they secured what apples there were left, ate all they wanted, and
filled their pockets with the rest. No more fishing for them that day.
They had found the famous tree, and now were intent on thinking how they
could most humiliate Willis.

Neither of them knew of his grand scheme to sell scions; but it had long
provoked their envy to see him peddling Wild Rose Sweetings at the Fair
for four cents apiece. They would find him now and thrust a
pink-cheeked apple under his nose!

But that would not be half satisfaction enough. They wanted to cut him
off from his tree forever, to put it out of his power ever to get
another apple from it. Nothing less would appease the grudge they bore
him.

And what those two malicious youths did was to take their jack-knives
and girdle that Wild Rose Sweeting tree close to the ground. They went
clear round the tree, cutting away the bark into the sap-wood; and not
content with girdling it once, they went round it three times in
different places.

That done, they went home in great glee, thrust the apples in Willis's
face, and bade him look to his good tree.

"We have found your tree, old Cuffy!" they cried to him. "You never will
get any more apples off that tree!"

Beyond doubt Willis was chagrined. He did not know that they had girdled
the tree, but he thought it not worth the while to go up there again
that fall, since there were no more apples. Yet even if Alfred and
Newman had found it, and even if they got the apples next season, he
supposed that he would still be able to cut scions from the tree. Late
in March, directly after the sap started, he went up there with knife
and saw to secure them.

Not till then did he discover that the tree had been cruelly girdled,
and that the spring sap had not flowed to the limbs. He cut a bundle of
scions, some of which were afterward set as grafts; but none of them
lived. The tree was killed. It never bore again. Nor can I learn that
sprouts ever came up about the root. It was quite dead when I first
visited the place.

Thus perished, untimely, the Wild Rose Sweeting. Ignorance and small
malice robbed the world of an apple that might have given delight and
benefit to millions of people for centuries to come.

I have sometimes thought that an inscription of the nature of an epitaph
should be cut on the great rock at the foot of which the tree stood.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE OLD SQUIRE ALLOWS US FOUR DAYS FOR CAMPING O