The Adair County news., 1921-02-09

For fully a minute Bryce stood
i.dumbly gazing upon the saerilege 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 burl tree At the point
where Bryce paused malignant
growth had developed on the trunk
of the tree, for all the world like
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 the work
of removing this excrescence had been
accomplished very neatly. With a
cross-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 10 TeCelEc Luclus
What Bryce could not understand,
however, was the stupid brutality of
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
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
gets back his sight, he will come up
here-and he must never know. Per-
haps he will have forgotten how many
! trees stood in this circle"
He paused. Peeping out from un-
der a 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 certain
extent the redwood chips under which
it had lain hidden had served to pro-
tect it, 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.
"Rondeaui" he muttered. "Jules
Rondeau! 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
a matter of secondary consideration.
Evidently, Bryce reasoned, someone
had desired that burl redwood greatly,
and that someone had not been Jules
Rondeau, since a woods-boss would not
be likely to spend five minutes of his
leisure time in consideration of the
beauties of burl tabletop or panel.
Hence, If Rondeau had superintendent
the task Of telling the tree, it must
have been at the behest of a superior;
and since wOOds-boSs acknowledges
no superior save the creator of the
payroll, the recipient Of that stolen
burl must have been Colonel Penning-
ton.
Suddenly he thrilled. If Jules Ron
deau had stolen that burl to present
it to Colonel Pennington, his employer,
then the finished article must be in
Pennington's home! And Bryce had
been invited to that home for dinner
the following Thursday by the Coloners
niece.
"Tn go, after ALL" he told himself.
sPll go-and I'll see what shall see."
A..aR-I@ a.,