LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
| "She stood there a little shyly at first; as slender and as gracefully upright as a birch" | [Frontispiece] |
| FACING PAGE | |
| "'Hit almost seems like,' she whispered, 'that ther old tree's got a spell in hit—ter bewitch folks with'" | [66] |
| "Even Bas Rowlett, whose nerves were keyed for an ordeal, started and almost let the leaning bridegroom fall" | [114] |
| "Dorothy flashed past him ... and a few seconds later he heard the clean-lipped snap of the rifle in a double report" | [186] |
THE ROOF TREE
CHAPTER I
Between the smoke-darkened walls of the mountain cabin still murmured the last echoes of the pistol's bellowing, and it seemed a voice of everlasting duration to the shock-sickened nerves of those within.
First it had thundered with the deafening exaggeration of confined space, then its echo had beaten against the clay-chink wall timbers and rolled upward to the rafters. Now, dwindled to a ghostly whisper, it lingered and persisted.
But the house stood isolated, and outside the laurelled forests and porous cliffs soaked up the dissonance as a blotter soaks ink.
The picture seen through the open door, had there been any to see, was almost as motionless as a tableau, and it was a starkly grim one, with murky shadows against a fitful light. A ray of the setting sun forced its inquisitive way inward upon the semi-darkness of the interior. A red wavering from the open hearth, where supper preparations had been going forward, threw unsteady patches of fire reflection outward. In the pervading smell of dead smoke from a blackened chimney hung the more pungent sharpness of freshly burned gun-powder, and the man standing near the door gazed downward, with a dazed stare, at the floor by his feet, where lay the pistol which gave forth that acrid stench.