of the gate there was
that elm I planted, and you promised to water while I was gone. It is
cut down now by the roots."

"I had it done, Stephen."

"I know. Do you know why? Because you love me: because you do not dare
to think of me, you dare not trust yourself to look at the tree that I
had planted."

She started up with a cry, and stood there in the old way, her fingers
catching at each other.

"It is cruel,--let me go!"

"It is not cruel."--He came up closer to her.--"You think you do not
love me, and see what I have made you! Look at the torpor of this
face,--the dead, frozen eyes! It is a 'nightmare, death in life,' Good
God, to think that I have done this! To think of the countless days of
agony, the nights, the years of solitude that have brought her to
this,--little Margaret!"

He paced the floor, slowly. She sat down on a low stool, leaning her
head on her hands. The little figure, the bent head, the quivering chin
brought up her childhood to him. She used to sit so when he had
tormented her, waiting to be coaxed back to love and smiles again. The
hard man's eyes filled with tears, as he thought of it. He watched the
deep, tearless sobs that shook her breast: he had wounded her to
death,--his bonny Margaret! She was like a dead thing now: what need to
torture her longer? Let him be manly and go out to his solitary life,
taking the remembrance of what he had done with him for company. He rose
uncertainly,--then came to her: was that the way to leave her?

"I am going, Margaret," he whispered, "but let me tell you a story
before I go,--a Christmas story, say. It will not touch you,--it is too
late to hope for that,--but it is right that you should hear it."

She looked up wearily.

"As you will, Stephen."

Whatever impulse drove the man to speak words that he knew were useless
made him stand back from her, as though she were something he was unfit
to touch: the words dragged from him slowly.

"I had a curious dream to-night, Margaret,--a waking dream: only a
clear vision of what had been once. Do you remember--the old time?"

What disconnected rambling was this? Yet the girl understood it, looked
into the low fire with sad, listening eyes.

"Long ago. That was a free, strong life that opened before us then,
little one,--before you and me? Do you remember the Christmas before I
went away? I had a strong arm and a hungry brain to go out into the
world with, then. Something better, too, I had. A pu