I looked at the white spot, and if I could have saved the tree by obliterating it there and then, I would have done so gladly. Carved deeply into its wood, and so long ago that the characters were all but illegible, was a double set of initials, and, between them, two hearts at once united and transfixed by the same arrow. Below these roughly-hewn signs a date appeared. I had often come upon the legend in my walks, and stopped to ruminate over it. Who had cut it I never knew, nor indeed whether C. D. and L. E. W., if they were alive to-day, would have joined with any enthusiasm in my desire for its preservation. But somehow it came to me at the moment as an infinitely pathetic thing, that the tree should be cut down after all those years, and the record destroyed—it had been done so obviously for perpetuity. What kind of stony-hearted villain must the woodreeve have been, I thought to myself, who could daub that patch of white paint so callously near to the silent eloquence of such an inscription?
Out of the far distance now, as I lingered over the carving in that mood of moralising sentimentality, there came creeping up the hollow stillness of the glade a murmur of voices, and, in a little, the tramp of heavy feet. I recognised the gang of woodmen carrying the tools of their craft; and behind them a little rabble of village-folk, mostly children. I drew off some way up the hillside, and sat me down on a stump, to look on at the now imminent, as well as inevitable spectacle.
To watch a great tree felled, especially when such a giant as this lovers’ tree was in question, is one of the most exciting things to be met with in country-life. There is ever growing suspense for the onlooker from the moment when the first axe-blow sends its echo ringing through the aisles of the wood, to that last stunned feeling after the mighty tree is down. The speed and workmanlike dexterity with which the gang now got to their task only served to intensify this sensation. One buckled on a pair of climbing-irons and carried aloft two long ropes, securing them to the trunk at its highest point of division. While he was still up there, like a perching crow black against the sky, another took a great glittering axe, and, stepping slowly round the tree, dealt it a succession of downward and inward blows, cutting out a deep ring all round the bole some six or eight inches above ground-level. On the side towards which the tree was to fall, this cut was now widened and deepened until it laid bare a good foot breadth of the solid heart of the wood. And while the amber chips were still flying under the axe, the rest of the gang were carrying the ropes away at two sharp angles, and binding them securely to neighbouring trees.