om the fork upward one half of it was dead; mistletoe
had sucked the life out of it, and lower and lower to the main body,
deeper and deeper to the vital heart of it, the sap was being drawn
away. An irresistible impulse impelled him to take the jack-knife from
his pocket, and as far as he could reach cut away this alien and deadly
growth. The sympathy into which he was come with the dying tree was
positively painful to him, and yet he was withheld from moving on by a
sort of fascination,--_he_ was that tree, and the mistletoe was rooted
in his bosom!

The last yellow leaves fluttered down and lodged on his head and
shoulders and in his bosom,--he did not lift his hand to brush them
away; the blue lizard slid across his bare ankle and silently vanished
out of sight, but he did not move a muscle. The brown mare bent her side
round like a bow, and stretched her slender neck out more and more, and
at last her nose touched his cheek, and then he roused himself and shook
the dead leaves from his head and shoulders, and stood up. "Come,
Fleety," he said, "we won't leave the plough in the middle of the
furrow." She did not move. "Come, come!" he repeated, "it seems like a
bad sign to stop here";--and then he put his hand suddenly to his heart,
and an involuntary shudder passed over him. Fleety had not unbent her
side, and her dumb, beseeching eyes were still upon him. He looked at
the sun, low, but still shining out bright, and almost as hot as ever;
he looked at his shadow stretching so far over the rough, weedy ground,
and it appeared to him strange and fantastic. Then he loosed the traces,
and, winding up the long rein, hung it over the harness; the plough
dropped aslant, and Fleety turned herself about and walked slowly
homeward,--her master following, his head down and his hands locked
together behind him.

The chimney was sending up its hospitable smoke, and Jenny was at the
well with the teakettle in her hand when he came into the dooryard.

"What in the world is going to happen?" she exclaimed, cheerfully. "I
never knew you to leave work before while the sun shone. I am glad you
have, for once. But what is the matter?"

He had come nearer now, and she saw that something of light and hope had
gone out of his face. And then Hobert made twenty excuses,--there wasn't
anything the matter, he said, but the plough was dull, and the ground
wet and heavy, and full of green roots; besides, the flies were bad, and
the mare ti