a century and a half ago.

"Hit's plum beautiful--out thar," she murmured, and the man's arm
slipped around her. It might almost have been the Kenneth Thornton who
had seen Court life in England who gallantly responded, "Hit's still
more beautiful--in _hyar_."

There had been an ice storm the night before, following on a day of
snowfall, and the mountain world stood dazzling in its whiteness with
every twig and branch glaced and resplendent under the sun.

On the ice-bound slopes slept shadows of ultramarine, and near the
window the walnut tree stood, no more a high-priest garbed in a green
mantle or a wind-tossed cloak of orange-brown, but a warrior starkly
stripped of his draperies and glitteringly mailed in ice.

He stood with his bold head high lifted toward the sky, but bearing the
weight of winter, and when it passed he would not be found unscarred.

Already one great branch dropped under its freighting, and as the man
and woman looked out they could hear from time to time the crash of
weaker brethren out there in the forests; victims and sacrifices to the
crushing of a beauty that was also fatal.

Until spring answered her question, Dorothy reflected, she could only
guess how deep the blight, which she had discovered in the fall, had
struck at the robustness of the old tree's life. For all its
stalwartness its life had already been long, and if it should die--she
closed her eyes as though to shut out a horror, and a shudder ran
through her body.

"What is it, honey," demanded the man, anxiously, as he felt her tremor
against his arm, "air ye cold?"

Dorothy opened her eyes and laughed, but with a tremulousness in her
mirth.

"I reckon I hain't plum rekivered from ther fright hit give me when ye
went over thar ter Virginny," she answered, "sometimes I feels plum
timorous."

"But ther peril's done past now," he reassured her, "an' all ther
enemies we had, thet's wuth winnin' over, hev done come ter be friends."

"All thet's wuth winnin' over, yes," she admitted without conviction,
"but hit's ther other kind thet a body hes most cause ter fear."

Into the man's thought flashed the picture of Bas Rowlett, and a grim
stiffness came to his lips, but she could hardly know of that remaining
danger, he reflected, and he asked seriously, "What enemies does ye
mean, honey?"

She, too, had been thinking of Bas, and she, too, believed that fear to
be her own exclusive secret, so she answered in a low voice: