e fixed the time--and day," repeated Kate dully. "When?"

Her smile had completely gone now. Her dark eyes were fixed on her
sister's face with a curious straining.

"Tuesday morning at--daybreak."

"Tuesday--daybreak? Go on. Tell me some more."

"There's no more to tell, only--only there's to be a ceremony. The
whole village is going to turn out and assist. Mrs. Day is going to
make an ad-dress. She said if she'd known there was a legend and curse
to that pine she's have had it down at the start of building the
church. She'd have had it down 'in the name of religion, honesty and
righteousness'--those were her words--'as a fitting tribute at the
laying of the foundations of the new church.' Again, in her own words,
she said, 'It's presence in the valley is a cloud obscuring the sun of
our civilization, a stumbling block to the progress of righteousness.'
And--and they all agreed that she was right--all of them."

Kate was no longer looking at her sister. She was gazing out
straight ahead of her. It is doubtful even if she had listened
to the pronouncements of Mrs. John Day, with her self-satisfied
dictatorship of the village social and religious affairs. She was
thinking--thinking. And something almost like panic seemed suddenly
to have taken hold of her.

"Tuesday--at daybreak," she muttered. Then, in a moment, her eyes
flashed, and she sprang from her chair. "Daybreak? Why, that--that's
practically Monday night! Do you hear? Monday night!"

Helen was on her feet in a moment.

"I--I don't understand," she stammered.

"Understand? No, of course you don't. Nobody understands but me," Kate
cried fiercely. "I understand, and I tell you they're all mad.
Hopelessly mad." She laughed wildly. "Disaster? Oh, blind, blind,
fools. There'll be disaster, sure enough. The old Indian curse will be
fulfilled. Oh, Helen, I could weep for the purblind skepticism of this
wretched people, this consequential old fool, Mrs. Day. And I--I am
the idiot who has brought it all about."

CHAPTER XXXI

ANTAGONISTS

Fyles endured perhaps the most anxious time that had ever fallen to
his lot, during the few days following his momentous interview with
Kate. An infinitesimal beam of daylight had lit up the black horizon
of his threatened future. It was a question, a painfully doubtful
question, as to whether it would mature and develop into a glorious
sunlight, or whether the threatening clouds would overwhelm it, and
thrust it