Parish Thornton came over and took her in his arms.

Then with an abrupt transition of mood Sim Squires wheeled to his
waiting cohorts.

"Men," he shouted, "we kain't handily blame her--she's a woman, an' I
honours her fer bein' tenderhearted, but any other tree'll do jest as
well! He kain't hev got fur off yit. Scatter out an' rake ther woods."

She saw them piling over the fence like a pack of human hounds, and she
shuddered. The last man carried the rope, which he had paused to pull
from the limb. They had already forgotten her and the man they had come
to kill. They were running on a fresh scent, and were animated with
renewed eagerness.

For a few minutes the two stood silent, then to their ears came a shout,
and though he said nothing, the husband thought he recognized the
piercing shrillness of the hunchback's voice and the resonant tones of
the sheriff. He wondered if Hump Doane had belatedly received an inkling
of that night's work and gathered a posse at his back.

There followed a shot--then a fusilade.

But Parish Thornton closed Dorothy in his arms and they stood alone.
"Ther old tree's done worked hits magic ergin, honey," he whispered,
"an' this time I reckon ther spell will last so long es we lives."

THE END

[Illustration]

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS,
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

THE
ROOF TREE

_by_ Charles Neville Buck

_Author of "The Tempering," "The Call of the Cumberlands," "The Clan
Call," etc._

The very breath of the Kentucky Hills is in Charles Neville Buck's
novels. In interpreting its elemental life, and its big-boned and
big-hearted people, he takes his place beside John Fox, Jr.

Here he tells a tale, the beginnings of which are laid several
generations in the past. Then the roof tree was planted, a token of love
to celebrate the wedding of Thornton and the first Dorothy Parrish. But
the same soil held the blood-watered seed of feud war, and now it was
bringing forth bitter fruit again, in the romance of the new Dorothy
Parrish and Thornton's descendant.

Under the name of Cal Maggard he had fled from Virginia, where, with the
juries packed against him, justice would have been a travesty. In
self-defense his sister had killed her husband, and he had taken the
guilt.

He sought only a refuge. Returning from a friendly visit to his
neighbor's where he met Dorothy, he found nailed to his door, a threat
of death if he repeated the visit.

What follows; the strange r