"You don't need to tell me!" said the boy, with a quick and agitated gesture of the hand. "Bates told me. Old Mrs. Prettyman's dead!" His merry, square-set face was changed and looked actually haggard, and his eyes searched Lavendar's with an expression oddly different from their usual fearless and straightforward one. They seemed afraid. "Was it my grandmother's--was it our fault?" he asked. "I, I feel like a murderer. Upon my soul, I do!" "Don't encourage morbid ideas, my dear fellow!" said Lavendar in a matter-of-fact tone. "There's trouble enough in the world without foolish exaggeration. Mrs. Prettyman was 'grave-ripe,' as she often said to your cousin; a very feeble old woman, whose time had come. The doctor's certificate will tell you how rheumatism had affected her heart, and the neighbours would very soon set your mind at rest by describing the number of times poor old Lizzie had nearly died before." "Think of it, though!" said Carnaby with wondering eyes. "Think of her lying dead in the cottage while I hacked and hewed at the plum tree just outside! By Jove! it makes a fellow feel queer!" He shuddered. The picture he evoked was certainly a strange one enough: a strange picture in the moonlight of a night in spring; the doomed beauty of the blossoming tree, the blind, headstrong human energy working for its destruction, and Death over all, stealthy and strong! "What an ass I was!" said Carnaby, summing up the situation in the only language in which he could express himself. "Sweating and stewing and hacking away--thinking myself so awfully clever! And all the time things ... things were being arranged in quite a different manner!" "We are often made to feel our insignificance in ways like this," said Lavendar. "We are very small atoms, Carnaby, in the path of the great forces that sweep us on." "I should rather think so!" assented the wondering boy. "And yet, can a fellow sit tight all the time and just wait till things happen?" "Ask me something else!" suggested Lavendar ironically.