Seeing his rope and saw, the men asked if there was a job on hand in which they were to help; but he told them "No." He was only going to take down a small branch out of the walnut tree, and he could do it without any assistance. Then the men went into the stables, and Dale passed through the kitchen garden to the back of the house. Beneath the walnut tree he slung the coiled rope over one shoulder and under the other arm; and then he slowly ascended the ladder, saying to himself: "I am on the steps of my scaffold. The scaffold steps. I am going up the scaffold steps." From the top of the ladder he got upon a branch, and, putting his arms about the stem, began to climb. "Yes," he said to himself, "my gallows tree. I am going up the gallows tree. This is my gallows tree;" and he climbed nimbly and firmly. The green leaves were all round him, a green tent with pretty loopholes through which he could take peeps at the home that was on the point of vanishing forever from his eyes. He paused on a level with the broad eaves, and looked through between branches at a window on the first floor landing. The casements stood wide open; the square of glass glittered; the muslin curtains just stirred, trembled whitely. Far down below his feet were the flagged pathway, the wooden bench, and three shining milk-pans. He climbed higher; and it seemed to him that from the moment he left the ground till now he had been like a drowsy man shaking off his sloth, like a drugged man recovering consciousness, like a man who was supposed to be dead rapidly coming to life again. With every inch added to the height from the ground, he felt stronger, more active, fuller of nervous and muscular energy. His fingers gripped each branch as firmly as if they had been iron clamps; his feet, encumbered by the stout boots, seemed to catch hold and cling to the slightest irregularities of the smooth bark as skilfully and tenaciously as if they had been the prehensile paws of a cat; not a touch of vertigo troubled him; he felt as fearless and splendidly alive as when he climbed tall trees for buzzards' eggs thirty-three years ago.