The boy only climbed the higher, and disappeared among the dark foliage and thick, quivering rays of branches. Parleying no more, Silas began chopping so vigorously that the great flakes of chips flew abroad upon the forest floor in a continuous shower, and soon paved it all about him with white blotches. When the trunk was cut to the middle, he shouted up another summons to surrender, but got no answer. Then his quick, strong strokes began to fall on the other side, steadily biting their way toward the centre, till the huge, ancient pillar of living wood began to tremble on its sapped foundation. Standing away from it, he peered up among the whorls of gray branches and broad shelves of leaves, but they disclosed nothing. “Hello! Come down! Don’t be a fool! An’ I won’t lick you. The tree’s comin’ an’ it’ll kill you.” Still no answer nor sound, save the solemn whisper of the leaves, came down from the lofty branches. “You’re a plucky one, but down you come!” In a sudden blaze of passion at being thus scorned, he drove his axe deep into the tree’s heart. A puff of wind stirred the topmost boughs. A shiver ran through every branch and twig. Fibre after fibre cracked and parted. The trunk tremulously swayed from its steadfast base. The sighing branches clung to the unstable air. A tall, lithe birch, that had long leaned to their embrace, sprang from it as in a flutter of fear, and then, with a slowly accelerating sweep, the ancient pillar, with all its long upheld burden of boughs and perennial greenery, went through its fellows to the last sullen boom of its downfall. Toombs breathlessly watched and listened for something besides the shortening vibration of the branches, some sound other than the swish of relieved entanglement, but no sound or motion succeeded them. “Nathan, Nathan,” he called again and again. He ran along the trunk looking among the branches. He felt under the densest tangles, then cleared them away with quick but careful axe strokes, dreading, in every moment of search, that the next would reveal the crushed and mangled form of the boy. Not till the shadows of night thickened the shadows of the woods did he quit his fruitless search. He knew the boy was dead, and, if found, what then? Well, for the present a plausible lie would serve him well enough. “Your boy has run off, Mis’ Toombs. You needn’t worry. He’ll git starved out ’fore long and sneak back. And he’ll work all the better when he does come. Boys has got to have their tantrums an’ git over ’em.” This device served so well to quiet any graver apprehensions that Ruth entertained, he the more insisted on it. “Like’s not he’s over to the Fort. They’ll make him stan’ round, I tell ye.”