trees. We thought we would, and set to work. But SARK having woefully
hacked the stem of a young apple-tree (_Lord Suffield_) and I having
laboriously and carefully cut away the entire network of the roots of
a damson-tree, under the impression that it was a weed, it was decided
that ARPACHSHAD had better do this skilled labour. We will attain to
it by-and-by.

ARPACHSHAD has now been engaged on the work for a fortnight, and I
think it will carry him on into the spring. The way he walks round the
harmless apple-tree before cautiously putting in the spade, is very
impressive. Having dug three exceedingly small sods, he packs them in
a basket, and then, with a great sigh, heaves it on to his shoulder,
and walks off to store the sods by the potting-shed. Anything more
solemn than his walk, more depressing than his mien, has not been seen
outside a churchyard. If he were burying the child of his old age,
he could not look more cut up. SARK, who, probably owing to personal
associations, is beginning to develop some sense of humour, walked by
the side of him this morning whistling "_The Dead March in Saul_."

The effect was unexpected and embarrassing. ARPACHSHAD slowly
relieved himself of the burden of the three sods, dropped them on
the ground with a disproportionate thud, and, producing a large
pocket-handkerchief, whose variegated and brilliant colours were,
happily, dimmed by a month's use, mopped his eyes.

"You'll excuse _me_, gents," he snuffled, "but I never hear that there
tune, '_Rule Britanny_,' whistled or sung but I think of the time when
I went down to see my son off from Portsmouth for the Crimee, '_Rule
Britanny_' was the tune they played when he walked proudly aboard. He
was in all the battles, Almy, Inkerman, Ballyklaver, Seringapatam, and