Under its base, where the roots sank deep into the foundations of the enduring hills, slept the dead who had loved it long ago. Perhaps in its pungent and aromatic sap ran something of the converted life and essence that had been their blood. Its bole, five feet of stalwart diameter, rose straight and tapering to the first right-angle limbs, each in itself almost a tree. Its multitude of lance-head leaves swept outward and upward in countless succession to the feathery crests that stirred seventy feet overhead—seeming to brush the large, low-hanging stars that the moon had dimmed.
All was tranquil and idyllic there—until the house door opened and a line of men filed out, bringing to his shameful end a human creature who shambled with the wretchedness of broken nerves.
Over the lowest branch, with business-like precision, Sim Squires pitched a stone on the end of a long cord, and to the cord he fastened the rope's end. All that was needed now was the weight which the rope was to lift, and in the blue-ink shadow that mercifully cloaked it and made it vague they placed the bound figure of their man.
CHAPTER XXXVI
As though to mask a picture of such violence the tree's heavy canopy made that spot one of Stygian murk, and even the moon hid its face just then, so that the world went black, and the stars seemed more brilliant against their inky velvet. But the light had held until the grim preparations were finished, and then when Bas Rowlett had taken his appointed place, tethered and wearing the hempen loop, when the other end of the long line had been passed through the broken slat of the closed window shutters, where it would be held by many hands in assurance against escape, Sim Squires kept his promise.
His followers trooped callously back into the house and he himself remained there, on watch, only until with the stiffness of a sleep walker Dorothy Thornton appeared for a moment in the open door and came slowly to the foot of the tree.
She could scarcely see the two men shrouded there in the profundity of shadow, and she had almost walked into the one who was to die before she realized his nearness and drew back shuddering.
Then Sim, who was holding the loose end of the rope so that it would not slacken too freely, put it in her hand and, as their fingers touched, found it icy.