On Killimaga's Cliff. . . . . _Frontispiece_

Something white swished quickly past him and he stared,
bewildered . . . She had stepped out of nowhere.

Saunders looked long and earnestly at his face. "He's the man!" he
announced.

"God rest her," Father Murray said after what seemed an age to Mark;
"it is not Ruth!"



[Transcriber's note: The Frontispiece and the "Something white..."
illustration were missing from the book.]




Charred Wood

CHAPTER I

THE LADY OF THE TREE

The man lay in the tall grass. Behind him the wall of the Killimaga
estate, from its beginning some fifty yards to his left, stretched away
to his right for over a thousand feet. Along the road which ran almost
parallel with the wall was the remnant of what had once been a great