the
combat a draw.

In the meantime the outlines of the ancient landmark became less
clear-cut. Rocks toppled from its summit; yawning gaps marred its sharp
edges; and at its base vines and growing things began to creep defiantly
in and out the widening fissures that rent its foundation. Almost
imperceptibly year by year dissolution went on, the crude structure
melting into picturesqueness and taking on the gentle charm of a ruin
until Martin Howe and Ellen Webster, its present-day guardians, beheld it
an ignominious heap of stone that lay crumbling amid woodbine and
clematis.

Far more beautiful was it in this half-concealed dilapidation than ever it
had been in the pride of its perfection. Then it had stood boldly out
against the landscape, naked and aggressive; to-day, clothed in Nature's
soft greenery, it had become so dim a heritage that it might easily have
receded into the past and been forgotten had not the discord of which it
had become the symbol been wilfully fanned into flame.

As in a bygone age one runner passed a lighted torch on to another, so did
one generation of Howes and Websters bequeath to the next the embers of a
wrath that never died. Each faction disclaimed all responsibility for the
wall, and each refused to lay hand to it.

Adamantine as was the lichen-covered heap of granite, it was of far more
mutable a quality than were the dispositions of those who had so
stubbornly let it fall into decay. Time's hand had softened the harsh
stone into mellow beauty; but the flintlike characters of the Howes and
Websters remained uncompromising as of yore.

And now that Martin Howe and Ellen Webster reigned in their respective
homesteads, neither one of them was any more graciously inclined toward
raising the fallen boundary to its pristine glory than had been their
progenitors. But for their obstinacy they might have agreed to dispense
with the wall altogether, since long ago it had become merely an empty
emblem of restriction, and without recourse to it each knew beyond
question where the dividing line between the estates ran; moreover, as
both families shunned the other's land as if it were plague-ridden
territory there was scant temptation for them to invade each other's
domains. But the man and the woman had inherited too much of the blood of
the original stock to consider entering into an armistice.

They had, it is true, bettered their predecessors to the extent of
exchanging a stilted greeti