Before he thought, Old Buck looked downward. He bent over, his eyes suddenly wide, his jaw hanging, and caught his breath quickly. Cut there in the tightly packed earth was the sign of the cross, about seven inches by five!
"Who done that?" he roared, straightening like a jack-in-a-box.
"What? Oh!" frightenedly. His mother, too, had seen the sign. "It's a warnin', Buck, honey—a warnin' to you!"
She wrung her hands. Her son looked about him queerly. Cut in the bark of a nearby tree was the cross again, seven inches by five. And he remembered distinctly that Grandpap Singleton had placed one hand on that tree to steady himself as he went.
"Who done that?" he roared again. "You, mother, you done it. Old Bill Singleton couldn't ha' done it without me a-seein' him. I'd ha' seed him, I tell ye!"
"I didn't, Buck," came promptly. Granny Wolfe was quivering with a fear that was certainly genuine. "It's a warnin' to you—Buck, it's the crook o' His finger!"
Old Buck swore roundly. He caught up an ax and chopped away the sign of the cross that had been cut in the bark of the tree. With his boot-heels he quickly effaced that which had been cut in the ground. Then he knelt before his false god, the moonshine still.
A voice cried out from the laurel, the voice of the Prophet. It seemed to hang in the air, like smoke—smoke of burning incense.
"'He came unto his own, and his own received him not.'"