grass and soared over its topmost branches on their skyward flight.

Spring, therefore, was its merriest time, for then every passer-by
would cry, "What a beautiful tree!" or "Did ye ever see the likes of
it?"

There were a few days of inevitable sadness a little later when its
million petals fell and made a delicate carpet of snow on the ground.
There they lay in a kind of fairy ring, as if there had been a shower
of mother-of-pearl in the April night; and no human creature would
have dared set a vandal foot on that magic circle, and mar the
perfection of its beauty. All the same the Plum Tree had lost its
petals, and that was hard to bear at first. But though its Wittisham
neighbours often said to summer trippers, "I wish you could have seen
it in blossom!" the Plum Tree did not repine, because of the
secrets--the thousand, thousand secrets--it held under its leaves.
"The blossoms were but a promise," it thought, "and soon everybody
will see the meaning of them."

Then the tiny green globes began to appear on every branch and twig;
crowding, crowding, crowding till it seemed as if there could never be
room for so many to grow; but the weaker ones fell from the boughs or
were blown away when the wind was fierce, so the Plum Tree felt no
anxiety, knowing that it was built for a large family! The little
green globes grew and grew, and drank in sweet mother-juices, and
swelled, and when the summer sun touched their cheeks all day they
flushed and reddened, till when August came the tree was laden with
purpling fruit; fruit so tempting that its rosy beauty had sometimes
to be hidden under a veil of grey fishing net, lest the myriad
bird-friends it had made during the summer should love it too much for
its own good.

So the Plum Tree grew and flourished, taking its part in the pageant
of the seasons, unaware that its existence was to be interwoven with
that of men; or that creatures of another order of being were to owe
some changes in their fortunes to its silent obedience to the motive
of life.

II

THE MANOR HOUSE

The long, low drawing room of the Manor at Stoke Revel was the warmest
and most genial room in the old Georgian house. It was four-windowed
and faced south, and even on this morning of a chilly and backward
spring, the tentative sunshine of April had contrived to put out the
fire in the steel grate. One of the windows opened wide to the garden,
and let in a scent which was less of flowers tha