were kings--"

"What, Wullie, a poor old tree buried all those years, pushing up to
light like this? How could it?" said Marcella, staring at it fascinated.

"I've tauld ye afore, Marcella. There's no ending tae things! Sometimes
the evil comes cropping oot, like when men get caught an' buried on
Lashnagar. Sometimes it's something bonny, like yon flooer. Yon apple
was meant to live an' bear fruit; the bonny apple's juist the
makeweight. It's the seed that matters all the time--the life that
slides along the tree's life. Yon tree was buried before its seedtime,
and all these years it struggled, up an' up, till it broke through into
the light of the sun. Like God strugglin' at the end through a man's
flesh--"

Marcella stared at him: Wullie often talked like this, and she only
understood very vaguely what he meant. But she could grasp the idea of
something trying to struggle through desperately, and looked pityingly
at the little frail plume of blossom.

"And after all these years, to struggle through on this bleak hill! Poor
little tree!" she said.

"That happens often to folk's lives. They come struggling through tae
something very rough and hard. But it's the struggling that matters. Yon
tree may only have one fruit that will seed. And so life goes on--"

He stroked his beard and stared over the sea to where the brown-sailed
herring boats of his brother and his nephew were coming in through the
morning sunlight.