ly from the tongue
as a thing of which no man had seen any tangible evidence. If it had
anywhere an actual nucleus, that centre remained as impalpable and
unmaterial as fox-fire.

But the rumour of night meetings and oath-bound secrecy persisted, and
some of these shreds of gossip came to Dorothy Thornton over the
dooryard fence as passersby drew rein in the shadow of the black walnut.
Nearer anxieties just now made her mind unreceptive to loose and
improbable stories of that nature, and she gave them scant attention.

She found herself coming out to stand under the tree often, because it
seemed to her that here she could feel the presence of the man who had
gone away on a parlous mission--and it was during that time of his
absence that she found more to fear in a seemingly trivial matter than
in the disquieting talk of a mysterious body of avengers stirring into
life.

When she looked up into the branches that were colouring toward autumnal
hues she discovered here and there a small, fungus-like growth and
leaves that were dying unnaturally, as though through the agency of some
blight that diseased the vigour of the tree.

Her heart was ready to be frightened by small things, and through her
thoughts ran that old prophecy:

"I have ye strong faithe that whilst that tree stands and grows stronge
and weathers ye thunder and wind and is revered, ye stem and branches of
our family alsoe will waxe stronge and robust, but that when it fails,
likewise will disaster fall upon our house."

CHAPTER XXIV

From the shallow porch of a house over which brooded the dismal spirit
of neglect and shiftlessness a woman stood looking out with eyes that
should have been young, but were old with the age of a heart and spirit
gone slack.

Evidences of thrift cast overboard bespoke the dejection that held sway
there, and yet the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long
wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and lustreless hair, the hopeless mouth with
a front tooth missing, served in their unsightliness to make one forget
that the features themselves were well modelled, and that the thin
figure needed only the filling out of sunken curves to bring back
comeliness of proportion.

The woman was twenty-two and looked forty-five, but the small,
shawl-wrapped bundle of humanity that she held in her arms was her first
child, and two years ago she had been accounted a neighbourhood beauty.

Under her feet the flooring of the porch c