The vidette. (Iuka, Tishomingo County, Miss.) 1912-1967, 1920-06-03

i
He broke off abruptly, for he had
just remembered that he was to dine
at the Pennington house the following
Thursday--and he was not the sort Of
man who smilingly breaks bread with
his enemy.
All about Bryce we're scenes of
activity, of human endeavor, and to
him in that moment came the thought
my father brought all this to pass
and now the task of continuing it is
mine An those men who earn a
living in Cardigan's mill and on Cardi-
CAMS dock-those sailors who sail the
| ships that carry Cardigan's lumber
into the distant marts of men-are de-
pendent upon me; and my father used
to tell me not to fail them. Must my
father have wrought all this in vain ?
And must l stand by and see all this
go to satisfy the overwhelming ambition
Of Stranger" His big hands clench.
ed. Nor he growied savagely. "Give
me your last five annual statements,
Mr.. Sinclair, please"
The old servitor brought forth the
documents in question. Bryce stuffed
them into his pocket and left the Office.
Three quarters of an hour later he en-
tered the little amphitheater In the
Valley OF the Giants and paused with
an expression of dlsmay. One of the
giants had fallen and lay stretched
across the little clearing. In its de-
scent it had demolished the little
white stone over his mothers grave
and had driven the fragments of the
stone deep into,the earth.
The fact that the tree was down,
however, was secondary to the fact
that neither wind nor lightning had
brought it low, but rather the impious
hand of man; for the great Jagged
stump showed all too plainly the
marks of cross-cut saw and axe; a
pile of chips four feet deep Uttered the
ground. .5r.
For fully minute Bryce stood
dumbly gazing upon the sacrilege be
fore his rage and horror found vent in
words. IAN enemy has done this
thing" he cried aloud to the wood
| COLLINS. And over her grave !"
1t was a aburl tree. At the point
where Bryce paused a malignant
growth had developed on the trunk
of the tree, for all the world like a
tremendous wart.. This was the burl,
so priced for table-tops and ,panelling
because of the fact that the twisted
wavy, helter-skelter grain lends to the
wood an extraordinary beauty when
polished. Bryce noted that tire work
of removing this eXcrescence had been
| accomplished very neatly. With a
cr0ss-cut saw the growth, perhaps ten
feet in diameter had been neatly
sliced off much as a housewife cuts
slice after slice from a,loaf OF bread.
He guessed that these slices, practi-
cally circular in shape, had been rolled
out of the woods to some conveyance
waiting to receive them.
>, What Bryce. could not understand,
however, was the stupid brutality rof
/ the raiders in telling the tree merely
for that section of burl. BY permit
! ting the tree to stand and merely
building a staging up to the burl, the
latter could have been removed with
out vital injury to the tree-whereas
| by destroying the tree the wretches
had evidenced all too clearly to Bryce
q wanton desire to add insult to in
jury
poor old Dadp he murmured.
I'm glad now he has been unable to
get up here and see this. 1t would
have broken his heart. I'll have this
/ tree made into fence posts and the
stump dynamited and removed this
summer. After he is operated on ard
i gets back his sight, he win come up
here-and he must never know. Per-
haps he will have forgotten how many
trees stood in this circle"
He paused. Peeplng out from I'M
der chip among the litter at his feet
was the moldy corner of a white
envelope In an instant Bryce had it
in his hand. The envelope. was dirty
and weatherbeaten, but to q certain
extent the redwood chips under which
it had lain hidden had served to pro-
tect 1t, and the writing on the face
was still legible. The envelope was
empty and addressed to Jules Ron
deau, care of the Laguna Grande
Lumber company. Sequoia, California.
Bryce read and reread that address.
"Rondeau!" he muttered. Jules
R0ndeauI I've heard that name be-
fore-ah, yes Dad spoke of him last
night. He's Pennington's woods-boss
and"
An enemy had done this thing-and
in all the world John Cardigan had
but one enemy-Colonel Seth Penning-
ton. Had Pennington sent his woods
boss to do this dirty work out Of
sheer spite? Hardly. The section OF
burl was gone, and this argued that
the question of spite had been purely
matter of secondary consideration
Evidently. Bryce reasoned. someone
had desired that burl redwood greatly
and that someone had not been Jules
| Rondaau since n yvOOfS.hc,SS .xVOg1Id moi