tremulous as though she had seen or heard a
ghost, while in her thin and shrunken bosom her heart pounded. Then she
said: "I'll be thar d'reckly. I'll take ther baby back ter Mirandy."

"No," commanded the man, "bring hit with ye. I hain't nuver saw hit
yit."

* * * * *

Parish Thornton had come safely home, and in forest stretches where
fallen leaves lay crisp and thick under foot the razor-backs were
fattening on persimmons and mast. Along the horizon slept an ashen mist
of violet. "Sugar trees" blazed in rustling torches of crimson and in
the sweet-gums awoke colour flashes like those which glint in a goblet
of burgundy.

Before the house in the bend of the river the great walnut stood like a
high-priest lording it over lesser clerics: a Druid giant of blond
maturity, with outstretched arms that seemed to brush the drifting
cloud-fleece by day and the stars by night. It whispered with the
wandering voices of the little winds in tones of hushed mystery.

Mellow now and tranquil in its day of fruitage it had the seeming of
meditation upon the cycles of bud and leaf, sun and storm; the starkness
of death and the miracle of resurrection.

Yet the young wife searched its depths of foliage with an eye of anxiety
for, though she had not spoken of it, her discernment recognized that
the fungus-like blight was spreading through its breadth and height with
a contagion of unhealth.

Beneath it Parish and Dorothy were gathering and piling the walnuts that
should in due season be beaten out of their thick husks and stored away
for winter nights by the blazing hearth, and in their veins, too, was
the wine and the fragrance of that brief carnival that comes before the
desolation of winter.

Dorothy straightened and, looking off down the road, made sudden
announcement.

"Look thar, Cal. Ef hit hain't a stranger ridin' up on hoss-back. I
wonder now who _is_ he?"

With unhurried deliberation, because there was languor in the air that
day, the man rose from his knee, but as soon as he saw the mounted
figure his features stiffened and into them came the expression of one
who had been suddenly stricken.

Dorothy, still looking outward, with the inquisitiveness of a land to
which few strangers come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and
quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not see it, the man
drew a long breath into his chest and schooled himself to the stoic
bearing of