Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/21

 return with the full gallop and a visage white. 'Look!' they cry. 'These apples, so pale before, are covered with spots like blood!'

"What Meester Sowers say then I do not know, but the neighbors run back to the tree with shovels and picks. There in his grave at last they find poor Micah, and always after that it is called Micah's tree and Micah's apples, and always after that these spots appear as a witness that the sin which is buried at the foot of a tree it shall make itself known in the fruit."

It is an old wives' tale, of course, like the stories of fairies and witchcraft which you heard when you were a child and which have been told to children since time immemorial, yet it's a tale which is believed more than doubted throughout our part of Eastern Connecticut. So if it had its effect on Charlotte's mind, especially when she looked out of her window and gazed at Micah's tree, I