The Roof Tree

by Charles Neville Buck

"Then ye kin give us yore blessin' atter all—despite ther charge thet hangs over me?"

"My blessin'? Why, boy, hit's like a dead son hed done come back ter life—an' false charges don't damn no man!"

The aged face had again become suffused with such a glow as might have mantled the brow of a prophet who had laboured long and preached fierily for his belief, until the hoar-frost of time had whitened his head. It was as if when the hour approached for him to lay down his scrip and staff he had recognized the strength and possible ardour of a young disciple to come after him.

But after a little that emotional wave, which had unconsciously straightened his bent shoulders and brought his head erect, subsided into the realization of less inspiriting facts.

"Atter all," he said, thoughtfully, "I've got ter hev speech with old Jim Rowlett afore this matter gits published abroad. He's done held ther same notions I have—about Dorothy an' Bas—an' I owes hit ter him ter make a clean breast of what's come ter pass."

The wounded man in the chair was gazing off through the window, and he was deeply disturbed. He stood sworn to kill or be killed by the man whom these two custodians of peace or war had elected in advance as a clan head and a link uniting the factions. If he himself were now required to assume the mantle of leadership, it was hard to see how that quarrel could be limited to a private scope.

"When I come over hyar," he said, steadily and deliberately, "I sought ter live peaceable—an' quiet. I didn't aim, an' I don't seek now, ter hold place as head of no feud-faction."

"Nuther did I seek ter do hit." The old man's voice was again the rapt and fiery utterance of the zealot. "Thar wasn't nuthin' I wouldn't of chose fust—but when a man's duty calls ter him, ef he's a true man in God's eyes, he hain't got no rather in the matter which ner whether. He's beholden ter obey! Besides—" the note of fanatical exaltation diminished into a more placid evenness—"besides, I've done told ye I only sought ter hev ye lead toward peace an' quiet—not ter mix in no warfarin'."

So a message went along the waterways to the house where old Jim Rowlett dwelt, and old Jim, to whose ears troubling rumours had already come stealing, mounted his "ridin'-critter" and responded forthwith and in person.

He came, trustful as ever of his old partner, in the task of shepherding wild flocks, yet resentful of the girl's rumoured rebellion against what was to have been, in effect, a marriage of state.