ll look down on people as they
live and die--and are born. At last," she concluded, "when I come to die
myself, I want to be buried under it, too."

When the young walnut had been lifted clear and its roots packed with
some of its own native earth Kenneth Thornton started away carrying it
in advance while Dorothy and Peter followed.

But before they came to the open space young Doane stopped on the path
and barred the girl's way. "Dorothy," he began, awkwardly, and with
painful embarrassment, "I've got something thet must needs be said--an'
I don't rightly know how to say it."

She looked up into his set face and smiled.

"Can I help you say it?" she inquired, and he burst out passionately,
"Until _he_ come, you seemed to like me. Now you don't think of nobody
else but jest him ... and I hates him."

"If it's hatred you want to talk about," she said, reproachfully, "I
don't think I can help you after all."

"Hatred of him," he hastened to explain. "I've done lived in the
woods--an' I ain't never learned pretty graces ... but I can't live
without you, an' if he comes betwixt us...."

The girl raised a hand.

"Peter," she said, slowly, "we've been good friends, you and I. I want
to go on being good friends with you ... but that's all I can say."

"And him," demanded the young man, with white cheeks and passion-shaken
voice, "what of him?"

"He asked me an hour ago," she answered, frankly. "We're going to be
married."

The face of the backwoodsman worked spasmodically for a moment with an
agitation against which his stoic training was no defense. When his
passion permitted speech he said briefly, "I wishes ye joy of him--damn
him!"

Then he wheeled and disappeared in the tangle.

"I'm sorry, dearest," declared Thornton when she had told him the story
and his arms had slipped tenderly about her, "that I've cost you a
friend, but I'm proud beyond telling that this tree was planted on the
day you declared for me. To me too, it's a monument now."

That night the moon was clouded until late but broke through its
shrouding before Dorothy went to bed, and she slipped out to look at
the young shoot and perhaps to think of the man who had taken her in his
arms there.

But as she approached she saw no standing shape and when she reached the
spot she found that the freshly placed earth had been dug up. The tree
had been spitefully dragged from its place and left lying with its roots
extending up instead of its bra