"It's a bit sad, isn't it?" Marcella said dreamily. "It seems hard on
the tree somehow, Wullie. Just as if the poor tree was only a path for
the new tree to walk along--"

"Well, that's all life is--a path for other life to walk along."

"I wish you'd explain better, Wullie," she said, staring from him to the
plant.

"Explaining's never any use, lassie. Folks have to live things to find
them out." He stood up slowly. "There's the boats comin' in, an' I must
get on back to the huts. Ye'll learn, Marcella--ye'll come tae it some
day that ye're only a path yerself for things to walk along--"

"Wullie--_what_ things?" she demanded.

"Other folks, maybe. Maybe God," he said, and went off to the huts.

Overcome by the pathos of the little hopeful tree, Marcella carried
baskets of soil from the farm and pots of water to lay them round about
it. She planted stakes round it to keep off the force of the wind. But
that year the flowering bore no fruit. And Wullie smiled at her attempts
to help the tree.

"The roots are doon too deep, lassie," he said. "Sae deep ye canna reach
them. There's little ye can dae for tree or man, Marcella, but juist not
hinder them. All we can do, the best of us, is to put a bit of soil an'
watter half-way up a tree trunk an' hope we're feeding the roots--"