148 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS 



that they will go to as high a heaven ; but 

 for the time being they have no rights that 

 you are under the slightest obligation to con- 

 sider. You may kill them to-morrow, and no- 

 body will accuse you of murder. You may 

 turn all their beauty to ashes, and it will be 

 nobody's business to remonstrate. The trees 

 are yours. 



I hope, notwithstanding, that you do not 

 quite think so. I would rather believe that 

 you look upon your so-called proprietorship 

 as little more than a convenient legal fiction ; 

 of use, possibly, against human trespassers, 

 but having no force as against the right of 

 the trees to live a tree's life and fulfill a tree's 

 end. 



One of them, I perceive, is dead already. 

 Like many a human being we have known, 

 it had a poor start ; no more than " half a 

 chance," as the saying goes. It struck root 

 on a ledge, in a cleft of rock, and after a 

 struggle of twenty or thirty years has found 

 the conditions too hard for it. Its neighbors 

 all appear to be doing well, with the excep- 

 tion of one that had its upper half blown 

 away a few years ago by a disrespectful 



