So they went forward until they came to a point where they stood on the unforested patch of a "bald knob." There Rowlett halted again and pointed downward. Beneath them spread the valley with the band of the river winding tenuously through the bottoms of the Harper farm. About that green bowl the first voices of the coming storm were already rumbling with the constant growl of thunder. "Thar's ther house--and thar's ther big tree in front of hit," said Rowlett. "Ef I owned ther place I'd shorely throw ther axe inter hit afore it drawed a lightnin' bolt down on ther roof." Cal Maggard, who had known walnuts only growing in the forest, gazed down now with something of wonderment at this one which stood alone. A sense of its spreading magnificence was borne in upon him, and though the simile was foreign to his mind, it seemed as distinct and separate from the thousands of other trees that blended in the leagues of surrounding forestry as might a mounted and sashed field marshal in the centre of an army of common soldiery. Even in the dark atmosphere of gathering storm its spread of foliage held a living, golden quality of green and its trunk an inky blackness that gave a startling vividness. He did not know that this tree which grows stiff of head and narrow of shoulder in the woods alters its character when man provides it with a spacious setting, and that it becomes the noblest of our native growths. He did not know that when Ovid wrote of folk in the Golden Age, who lived upon: Acorns that had fallen From the towering trees of Jove, he called acorns what we call nuts, and that it was not the oak but the walnut that he celebrated. But Maggard did know it had been through the leafage of that splendid tree that he had first glimpsed the girl's face, and he did know that never before had he seen a thing of trunk and branch and leaf that had so impressed him with its stateliness and vital beauty. If he were master at that house, he thought, he would not cut it down. "I'm obleeged ter ye fer comin' thus fur with me," he observed, then supplemented drily, "an' still more fer not comin' no further." The other laughed. "I hain't ergoin' ter 'cumber yore projeck's none ternight," he declared, good-humouredly, then added fairly enough, "but termorrer night _I_ aims ter go sparkin' thar myself--an' I looks ter ye to do as much fer me an' give me a cl'ar road." Maggard had hardly reached the house when, with all the passionate violence of the hills, the tempest broke. Safe inside, he talked and smoked with the patriarch and his thoughts wandered, as he sat there by the hearth, back to the room from which now and then drifted a fragment of plaintively crooning song.