Page:The Garden of Romance - 1897.djvu/247

Rh One of the great branches had been broken, rough hands had plucked at it, for it stood on the public road.

"Men may break off its blossoms without saying thank you; they may steal the fruit and break the boughs. If one might speak so of a tree—it was never foretold at the cradle that it should stand like this. Its story opened so fairly, and now what is its lot? Forsaken and forgotten, a garden tree in a ditch by a public road! There it stands with no protection, plundered and torn! Not yet has it faded, but year by year its blossoms will be fewer, its fruit less and less, until at last—ay, then its story will be done!"

So thought Anthony as he stood under the tree, and so he thought many a night in his lonely little room in the wooden booth in the strange town of Copenhagen, whither his rich employer, the Bremen merchant, had sent him, on condition that he should not marry.

"Marry! ha, ha!" and he laughed bitterly to himself.

The winter came early, and it froze hard; out of doors there was a snow-storm, so that every one who could stayed indoors. So it happened that Anthony's neighbour over the way never noticed that his booth had not been opened for two whole days, and that he himself had not been seen, for who would go out in such weather when he could stay at home?

Those were grey, dark days, and in houses where the windows were not made of glass twilight and pitch dark reigned by turns. Old Anthony had not left his bed for two days, he had no strength for it. For a long time past the hard weather had benumbed his limbs. Forsaken lay the old bachelor; he could not help himself, barely