“Better lose the tree than the house,” RoBards retorted. “Wall, they’re both your’n to do with as you’re a mind to,” said Albeson, absolving himself of guilt and folly, as he went his way. RoBards paused at the front steps to look back at his gigantic quondam friend. It had been treasonably making ready to betray him. He did not love it any more. The house itself was changing from a sanctuary to a penitentiary. He could set it on fire easily, but the heat would only crack the foundation walls apart. He could not burn those stones. He had justly sentenced the tree to a partial execution. If it perished, it had earned its fate. It was beautiful, though. It stood lofty and shapely, the broad leaves shimmering in an afternoon zephyr. It had a frank and joyous life and he wondered if it would suffer much pain from the mayhem he had committed on it. He had visited a slow death of torture upon the patriarch. Would it know that it was dying? Would it ache and struggle against its fate? He was as sorry for it now as a man is for an overpowered enemy; he was sorry he had been so harsh with it. He thought of Immy as she had been when he revenged her upon Jud Lasher. What, after all, had been the profit of that murder? He had tried to shelter Immy from harm as if she were a sacred ark, death to touch. And now she was the reckless companion of Harry Chalender in his revels. He had guarded her ignorance as a kind of virginity, and now there was nothing that she did not know. He had taken a life with his own hands, to spare her so much as one chance meeting with someone who might remind her of her lucklessness. And now she flouted him to his face and was so bored with his society that she devoted herself to a man whose name he could not hear without rancor. Well, if she would only be patient a while longer, her father would find the means and the time to give her more attention. He would travel with her to far-off lands, where she would be so fascinated with new sights and new suitors that she would forget Chalender and find some young and noble lover worthy of the Immy that she should have been. The next day as he stood on the porch, he was startled to hear her voice crying his name: “Papa, papa!” He paused, thinking it imagination, but he saw her coming to him in a swift-rolling carriage. At her side was Chalender with exultance in his smile. The carriage whirled in at the open gate, and the moment the driver stopped it short, Chalender leaped out, helped Immy to alight, and ran with her to the steps. And there the twain knelt in a laughing parody of homage, and Chalender—Chalender his arch enemy, his chief annoyance upon the earth—dared to mimic Immy’s word and exclaim: “Papa!” As RoBards’ eyes rolled in wonder, he caught sight of Patty at a window staring unseen. She vanished almost at once, as if she had fallen. Before RoBards could frame a question, Immy was up and at him in a whirlwind. She had her arms about his neck and was crying: