ly.

"And that's the worst of it," replied the man of letters, "for I'm
horribly afraid I did mean to be rude to you. When I looked up and saw
you up there something surged up in me that was in all the revolutions
of history. Oh, there was admiration in it too! Perhaps there was
idolatry in all the iconoclasts."

He seemed to have a power of reaching rather intimate conversation in
one silent and cat-like bound, as he had scaled the steep road, and it
made her feel him to be dangerous, and perhaps unscrupulous. She changed
the subject sharply, not without it movement toward gratifying her own
curiosity.

"What DID you mean by all that about walking trees?" she asked. "Don't
tell me you really believe in a magic tree that eats birds!"

"I should probably surprise you," said Treherne gravely, "more by what I
don't believe than by what I do."

Then, after a pause, he made a general gesture toward the house and
garden. "I'm afraid I don't believe in all this; for instance, in
Elizabethan houses and Elizabethan families and the way estates have
been improved, and the rest of it. Look at our friend the woodcutter
now." And he pointed to the man with the quaint black beard, who was
still plying his ax upon the timber below.

"That man's family goes back for ages, and it was far richer and freer
in what you call the Dark Ages than it is now. Wait till the Cornish
peasant writes a history of Cornwall."

"But what in the world," she demanded, "has this to do with whether you
believe in a tree eating birds?"

"Why should I confess what I believe in?" he said, a muffled drum of
mutiny in his voice. "The gentry came here and took our land and took
our labor and took our customs. And now, after exploitation, a viler
thing, education! They must take our dreams!"

"Well, this dream was rather a nightmare, wasn't it?" asked Barbara,
smiling; and the next moment grew quite grave, saying almost anxiously:
"But here's Doctor Brown back again. Why, he looks quite upset."

The doctor, a black figure on the green lawn, was, indeed, coming toward
them at a very vigorous walk. His body and gait very much younger than
his face, which seemed prematurely lined as with worry; his brow was
bald, and projected from the straight, dark hair behind it. He was
visibly paler than when he left the lunch table.

"I am sorry to say, Miss Vane," he said, "that I am the bearer of bad
news to poor Martin, the woodman here. His daughter died half an