sself up ter be honest. Twell one or t'other of them things comes ter
pass, I hain't got nothin' more ter say."

CHAPTER XI

The room that Dorothy Harper had given over to the wounded man looked
off to the front, across valley slope and river--commanding the whole
peak and sky-limited picture at whose foreground centre stood the walnut
tree.

Uncle Jase came often and as yet he had been able to offer no greater
assurance than a doubtful shake of the head. Bas Rowlett, too, never let
a day pass without his broad shadow across the door, and his voice
sounding in solicitous inquiry. But Dorothy had assumed an autocracy in
the sick room which allowed no deviations from its decree of
uninterrupted rest, and the plotter, approaching behind his mask of
friendship, never found himself alone with the wounded man.

Between long periods of fevered coma Cal Maggard opened his eyes weakly
and had strength only to smile up at the face above him with its nimbus
of bronze set about the heaviness of dark hair--or to spend his scarcely
audible words with miserly economy.

Yet as he drifted in the shadowy reaches that lie between life and death
it is doubtful whether he suffered. The glow of fever through his
drowsiness was rather a grateful warmth, blunted of all responsible
thinking, than a recognized affliction, and the realization of the
presence near him enveloped him with a languorous contentment.

The sick man could turn his head on his pillow and gaze upward into cool
and deep recesses of green where the sun shifted and sifted golden
patches of light, and where through branch and twig the stir of summer
crooned a restful lullaby. Often a squirrel on a low limb clasped its
forepaws on a burgher-fat stomach, and gazed impudently down, chattering
excitedly at the invalid. From its hanging nest, with brilliant flashes
of orange and jet, a Baltimore oriole came and went about its
housekeeping affairs.

As half-consciously and dreamily he gazed up, between sleeping and
waking, the life of the tree became for him that of a world in
miniature.

But when he heard the door guardedly open and close, he would turn his
gaze from that direction as from a minor to a major delight--for then he
knew that on the other side of the bed would be the face of Dorothy
Harper. "Right smart's goin' ter _dee_pend on how hard he fights
hisself," Uncle Jase told Dorothy one day as he took up his hat and
saddle-bags. "I reckon ef he feels sar