Stephen kicked his heels in the long grass and heaved a great sigh. “Oh, dear,” he said, “it might chance that I should never be any of them. Anyway I will try.” CHAPTER IX KING JAMES’ TREE It was on the day that the bells of all New England were ringing to announce the death of Good Queen Anne and the accession to the English throne of her far-distant cousin, George of Hanover, that Alisoun and Gilbert Sheffield, married now for many years, extended the boundary of Master Simon’s garden for the third time. It reached now down the hill to the swift brook that sang so loud on summer nights, stretched as far as the steep, dusty highway, and took in, at the corner of the field, the great pine that had always been called King James’ Tree. Master Simon had planted it, a little spruce sapling, in the last year of the reign of King James the First. A new highway had been built, skirting the southern edge of his land, and there, where the slope was steepest and the sun shone hottest, he had set the tree at the corner of the road. “It is planted in the King’s service,” he had said to Mistress Radpath, “for some day it will stretch its boughs across the road and yield shade and shelter to such of His Majesty’s subjects who pass this way. Therefore will we call it King James’ Tree.” James the First had long been dead, his son had sat upon the throne and lost it through trying to rule with too high a hand, his grandsons had won the royal power back and lost it again, his great granddaughters, Mary and Anne, had ruled and died, and now the royal house of Stuart had come to an end. Quite regardless of all these wars and turmoils, the great pine had grown steadily, spreading its broad branches and its grateful shade across the highway. Kings and Queens might rise and fall, but it seemed that the King’s tree was to grow undisturbed forever. “It is a noble old pine,” said Alisoun, looking up at the tall, straight stem. “I wish that Master Simon could see how faithfully it is performing the task to which he set it.” Behind them, as they stood there together, rose the square bulk of the big white house with which Roger Bardwell had replaced the rude cottage where Margeret Radpath had dwelt as a child. Yet the cottage was still there, built into the heart of the great new house so that the low-ceiled kitchen, the broad fireplace with its swinging crane and the wide-opening door, hospitable to every comer, were all untouched. Roger had won great prosperity in his trading ventures across the seas, and had become master of a fleet of tall-masted vessels that sailed to England, Holland, Spain and the West Indies. Of this fleet Gilbert Sheffield, Alisoun’s husband, had once been first officer and was now manager, since Roger Bardwell, and Margeret with him, slept beside Master Simon in the graveyard on the hill.