a woodsman to whom
trees in their general sense were common things. In this great growth he
felt a quality and a presence. Its moods were as varied as those of life
itself--as it stood triumphing over decades of vicissitude, blight, and
storm.

"I wonder ef hit knows," said the girl, abruptly, "who hit war thet shot
ye, Cal?"

The man shook his head and smiled.

"Mebby hit don't jedgmatically _know_," he made answer, seeking as he
had often sought before to divert her thoughts from that question and
its secret answer: "But so long es hit stands guard over us, I reckon no
enemy won't skeercely _succeed_."

CHAPTER XIII

The blossom had passed from the laurel and rhododendron and the June
freshness had freckled into rustiness before the day came when Dorothy
Harper and Cal Maggard were to be married, and as yet the man had not
been able to walk beyond the threshold of the house, and to the people
of the neighbourhood his face had not become familiar.

Once only had Cal been out of doors and that was when leaning on the
girl's arm he had gone into the dooryard. Dorothy did not wish the
simple ceremony of their marriage to take place indoors, but that when
Uncle Jase, the justice of the peace, joined their hands with the words
of the simple ritual, they should stand under the shade of the tree
which, already hallowed as a monument, should likewise be their altar.

So one afternoon, when the cool breath of evening came between sunset
and dusk, they had gone out together and for the first time in daylight
he stood by the broad-girthed base of the walnut's mighty bole.

"See thar, Cal," breathed the girl, as she laid reverent fingers upon
the trunk where initials and a date had been carved so long ago that now
they were sunken and seamed like an old scar.

"Them letters an' dates stands fer ther great-great-great gran'mammy
thet wrote ther book--an' fer ther fust Kenneth Thornton. They're our
fore-parents, an' they lays buried hyar. Hit's all in ther front pages
of thet book upsta'rs in ther chist."

The ground on which they stood was even now, for the mounds so long ago
heaped there had been levelled by generations of time. Later members of
that house who had passed away lay in the small thicket-choked burial
ground a hundred yards to the side.

"Hit's a right fantastic notion," complained old Caleb who had come out
to join them there, "ter be wedded outdoors under a tree, stid of
indoors under a roof,"