A woman, one of those flat-chested, neutral-tinted women one sees in country districts, came out of the cottage and stared sombrely at the fallen giant, while the two men—her husband and grownup son, as I afterwards found—walked round it, lopping off a bough here and there. I went up and asked her for a glass of water, impelled more by curiosity than thirst; then, as I sat on the oozing trunk and drank it, I asked her why the tree had been cut down. Surely they would miss it when the summer came, for the shadows of the other trees would not reach to the house. “Well, it ain’t always summer, you see,” said the woman, and she looked at the tree with a sort of sickened dislike on her dull face. “It wur a deal too near to be pleasant. Night after night I laid awake in the winter when the wind wur blowin’ and ’eard it moanin’ an’ cryin’ out, thinkin’ it ’ud crash down on us one o’ these nights. And where ’ud us be then?” I gave a little shudder. “I never thought of that,” I said. “And it is horribly big.” “Big! Yer right there! Ah! when I wur lyin’ in bed thur a’ nights with the wind blowin’ across it and across us, it seemed like as it growed bigger an’ bigger, an’ we growed littler an’ littler. Why, I mind when my Jim there wur born—” and she jerked her thumb in the direction of the younger man. “Why, was he born here? and with that tree—” “Yes—twenty years ago, come next July. Awful the weather was, I mind; snow an’ rain an’ wind—the wind fair terrible, an’ that tree a-shriekin’ an’ moaning. There weren’t no doctor anywhere in reach, and there weren’t no nuss; my man ’ee did all ’ee could fur me. But, Lord bless you, miss, when I were in my pains it seemed as if I wur a-bein’ torn up by the roots, the same as that there tree was, an’ I didn’t rightly know which wur goin’ ter end me fust. My man, ’ee promised ’e’d ’ave it down first thing when the weather cleared. But thur was allus a powerful lot to do, an’ it got put off an’ put off; though I wur never not to say easy about it fur one minute o’ time. Allus afraid, then, that it ’ud fall on the kid an’ kill ’im. An’ the higher an’ heavier it got, the worse it seemed, fur them gum-tree roots don’t run not no depth ter speak of. But there it stayed, till only this very mornin’ the boss said as ’ow ’e an’ Jim ’ud ’ave it down. An’ thur it be, but I reckon as ’ow I’ll never quit dreamin’ on it. All my folk were woodcutters, an’ my feyther wur killed by a fallin’ tree, just the dead spit of this one.”