Half unconsciously she listened. There was no cessation in the dull noise; and to her it seemed full of threat and menace. She fancied that the other trees must be shaking all their remaining leaves in fear that a like fate might befall them, and she hoped that Dick had remembered to chase the chipmunk out of his hole. The chipmunk had been a friend of hers, and she used to drop acorns at the foot of the tree where he might find them. Vaguely she wondered whether she would recognise the little fellow again if she saw him in some other tree, and concluded that it was scarcely possible. While all the time the thud--thud of the axes seemed to weave itself into a sort of irregular accompaniment to her wandering thoughts. And then suddenly she was aware that it had stopped, and that a brief silence had once more fallen over the golden woods and the hazy field of corn. The silence was broken by a sharp crack. Then a series of small tearing, rushing, rending sounds ended in a mighty crash. Stephanie knew that the tree was down, and an odd little feeling of regret came over her; once more there was a moment of utter silence. Then, sharp and keen and terribly distinct, she heard a wild cry from Dick. She had run down the garden almost before that cry ceased to ring in the air, and now she fled over the rough ground outside with as swift and sure a step as a young deer might use. Her face was grey and drawn with the sense of coming disaster, but neither her feet nor her breath failed her as she breasted the low rise of ground, slippery with pine needles, which lay between her and the place from which that cry had come. As she gained the crest of the hill, she staggered back a step and almost fell, but recovered and ran on, though for a minute she was blind and deaf and scarcely conscious. The pine, shorn of its few branches, lay upon the ground, and near the stump lay her father, with Dick kneeling beside him. When her sight came back to her, she found that she also was kneeling there, staring stupidly at her brother's agonised face, and at the great branch torn from a neighbouring maple, which told all the terrible tale. Somewhere in the silent woods a chipmunk chattered shrilly, and she wondered when it would stop, for the noise hurt her head. Someone seemed to be saying drearily over and over again, "What are we to do? What are we to do?" and she felt angry with the momentous question. Surely silence was the only fitting thing.