t every day after that found Bas Rowlett at the house and the
evenings found him pondering his fancied progress with a razor-edged
zest of self-complacency.

"She'll hold out fer a spell," he told himself with large optimism.
"But ther time'll come. When an apple gits ripe enough hit draps offen
ther limb."

* * * * *

Over at the small county seat to the east the squat brick "jail-house"
sat in the shadow of the larger building. There was a public square at
the front where noble shade trees stood naked now, and the hitching
racks were empty. Night was falling over the sordid place, and the
mountains went abruptly up as though this village itself were walled
into a prison shutting it off from outer contacts.

The mired streets were already shadowy and silent save for the whoop of
a solitary carouser, and the evening star had come out cold and distant
over the west, where an amber stretch of sky still sought feebly to hold
night apart from day.

Through the small, grated window of one of the two cells which that
prison boasted, Parish Thornton stood looking out--and he saw the
evening star. It must be hanging, he thought, just over the highest
branches of the black walnut tree at home, and he closed his eyes that
he might better conjure up the picture of that place.

With day-to-day continuances the Commonwealth had strung out the
launching of his trial until the patience of the accused was worn
threadbare. How much longer this suspense would stretch itself he could
not guess.

"I wonder what Dorothy's doin' right now," he murmured, and just then
Dorothy was listening to Bas Rowlett's most excellent opinion of
himself.

It would not be long, the young woman was telling herself, before she
would go over there to the town east of the ridges--if only she could
suppress until that time came the furies that raged under her
masquerade and the aversion that wanted to cry out denunciation of her
tormentor!

But the summons from the attorney had never come, and Bas never failed
to come as regularly as sunrise or sunset. His face was growing more and
more hateful to her with an unearthly and obsessing antipathy.

One afternoon, when the last leaves had drifted down leaving the forests
stark and unfriendly, her heart ached with premonitions that she could
not soften with any philosophy at her command.

Elviry Prooner had gone away when Bas arrived, and the strokes of Sim
Squires' axe so