girl's glance went lightly
and contentedly, but when it came back to nearer distances it dwelt with
an absorbed tenderness on the gnarled old veteran of storm-tested
generations that stood there before the house: the walnut which the
people of her family had always called the "roof tree" because some
fanciful grandmother had so named it in the long ago.

"I reckon ye're safe now, old roof tree," she murmured, for to her the
tree was human enough to deserve actual address, and as she spoke she
sighed as one sighs who is relieved of an old anxiety.

Then, recalled to the mission that had brought her here, she thought of
the folded paper that she held in her hand.

So she drew the ancient trunk nearer to the window and lifted its
cover.

It was full of things so old that she paused reverently before handling
them.

Once the grandmother who had died when she was still a small child had
allowed her to glimpse some of these ancient treasures but memory was
vague as to their character.

Both father and mother were shadowy and half-mythical beings of hearsay
to her, because just before her birth her father had been murdered from
ambush. The mother had survived him only long enough to bring her baby
into the world and then die broken-hearted because the child was not a
boy whom she might suckle from the hatred in her own breast and rear as
a zealot dedicated to avenging his father.

The chest had always held for this girl intriguing possibilities of
exploration which had never been satisfied. The gentle grandfather had
withheld the key until she should be old enough to treat with respect
those sentimental odds and ends which his women-folk had held sacred,
and when the girl herself had "grown up"--she was eighteen now--some
whimsey of clinging to the illusions and delights of anticipation had
stayed her and held the curb upon her curiosity. Once opened the old
trunk would no longer beckon with its mystery, and in this isolated life
mysteries must not be lightly wasted.

But this morning old Caleb Harper had prosaically settled the question
for her. He had put that paper into her hand before he went over the
ridge to the cornfield with his mule and plow.

"Thet thar paper's right p'intedly valuable, leetle gal," he had told
her. "I wants ye ter put hit away safe somewhars." He had paused there
and then added reflectively, "I reckon ther handiest place would be in
ther old horsehide chist thet our fore-parents fetched o