that carried the
quality of furtiveness.

Instantly they had dropped to their bellies and wriggled snake-like away
from the spots where they had stood. Instantly, too, they became almost
invisible and two drawn weapons were thrust forward.

There they lay for perhaps two minutes, with ears straining into the
silence, neither exaggerating nor under-estimating the menace that might
have caused that sound in the underbrush. After a while Rowlett
whispered, "What did ye hear?"

"'Peared like ter me," responded Maggard, guardedly, "a twig cracked
back thar in ther la'rel."

Rowlett nodded but after a space he rose, shaking his head.

"Ef so be thar's anybody a-layin' back thar in ther bresh, I reckon he's
done concluded ter wait twell he gits ye by yourself," he decided.
"Let's be santerin' along."

So they went forward until they came to a point where they stood on the
unforested patch of a "bald knob." There Rowlett halted again and
pointed downward. Beneath them spread the valley with the band of the
river winding tenuously through the bottoms of the Harper farm. About
that green bowl the first voices of the coming storm were already
rumbling with the constant growl of thunder.

"Thar's ther house--and thar's ther big tree in front of hit," said
Rowlett. "Ef I owned ther place I'd shorely throw ther axe inter hit
afore it drawed a lightnin' bolt down on ther roof."

Cal Maggard, who had known walnuts only growing in the forest, gazed
down now with something of wonderment at this one which stood alone. A
sense of its spreading magnificence was borne in upon him, and though
the simile was foreign to his mind, it seemed as distinct and separate
from the thousands of other trees that blended in the leagues of
surrounding forestry as might a mounted and sashed field marshal in the
centre of an army of common soldiery.

Even in the dark atmosphere of gathering storm its spread of foliage
held a living, golden quality of green and its trunk an inky blackness
that gave a startling vividness.

He did not know that this tree which grows stiff of head and narrow of
shoulder in the woods alters its character when man provides it with a
spacious setting, and that it becomes the noblest of our native growths.
He did not know that when Ovid wrote of folk in the Golden Age, who
lived upon:

Acorns that had fallen
From the towering trees of Jove,

he called acorns what we call nuts, and that it was not the oak but