But the homely back gate swings over the charred stump of the boorish
tree burnt flush with the ground. Twelve months and a fortnight after the
firing of the shot which did not echo round the world, but was merely a
local defiant and emphatic promulgation of authority, a fire was set to
the base of the tree, for our tents had been pitched perilously close.
Space was wanted, and moreover its bony, imprecating arms, long since
bereft of beckoning fingers, menaced our safety. I said it must fall to
the north-east, for the ponderous inclination is in that direction, and
therein forestalled my experience and delivered the whole camp as
hostages into the hands of fortune.

In apparent defiance of the laws of gravity the tree fell in the middle
of the night with an earth-shaking crash to the south-east. There was no
apparent reason why it did not fall on our sleeping-tent and in one act
put an inglorious end to long-cogitated plans. Because some gracious
impulse gave the listless old tree a certain benign tilt, and because
sundry other happenings consequent upon a misunderstanding of the laws of
nature took exceptional though quite wayward turnings, I am still able to
hold a pen in the attempt to accomplish the task imposed by imperious
strangers.

And while on the subject of the clemency of trees, I am fain to dispose
of another adventure, since it, too, illustrates the brief interval
between the sunny this and the gloomy that. Fencing was in progress--a
fence designed to keep goats within bounds. Of course, the idea was
preposterous. One cannot by mere fencing exclude goats. The proof is
here. To provide posts for the vain project trees were felled, the butts
of which were reduced to due dimensions by splitting. A dead tree stood
on a slope, and with the little crosscut we attacked its base, cutting a