Slowly the sunset grew brilliant—then the foregrounds gave up their detail in a soft veiling of purple dusk, and the tree between the house and the road became a dark ghost-shape, etched in the unmoving majesty of spread and stature.
"Hit hain't jest a tree," whispered the girl with an awe-touched voice, "hit's human—but hit's bigger an' wiser an' stronger then a human body."
The man nodded his head for so it seemed to him, a woodsman to whom trees in their general sense were common things. In this great growth he felt a quality and a presence. Its moods were as varied as those of life itself—as it stood triumphing over decades of vicissitude, blight, and storm.
"I wonder ef hit knows," said the girl, abruptly, "who hit war thet shot ye, Cal?"
The man shook his head and smiled.
"Mebby hit don't jedgmatically know," he made answer, seeking as he had often sought before to divert her thoughts from that question and its secret answer: "But so long es hit stands guard over us, I reckon no enemy won't skeercely succeed."
CHAPTER XIII
The blossom had passed from the laurel and rhododendron and the June freshness had freckled into rustiness before the day came when Dorothy Harper and Cal Maggard were to be married, and as yet the man had not been able to walk beyond the threshold of the house, and to the people of the neighbourhood his face had not become familiar.