Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/19

 any more. The only work they do is to plant an orchard, being fond of the cider, and in the middle of the orchard there is one tree—a bittersweet—bearing very fine apples which everyone admires. It is a pale apple and of such peculiar flavor that when the frost she has come the neighbors drop in to say the good word, and always they stroll in the orchard to fill their pockets from the bittersweet tree.

"As the years go on, Meester Sowers and his four sons drink more and more of the cider and get more and more into debt, till one day the sheriff rap-a-rap-rap on this very door and say, if the taxes are not paid by the first of the year the place will be sold and they thrown out in the cold, cold world, lamenting. Whereat they look at each other and cry in a rage that the honest man he cannot prosper any more.

"The next day is Christmas Eve, and just after dark another visitor comes