them to pieces. Finally, the tempter filled the tree-top with
his own birds of pride, the starry pageant of the peacocks.
And the spirit of the brute overcame the spirit of the tree,
and it rent and consumed the blue-green birds till not a plume
was left, and returned to the quiet tribe of trees. But they
say that when spring came all the other trees put forth leaves,
but this put forth feathers of a strange hue and pattern.
And by that monstrous assimilation the saint knew of the sin,
and he rooted that one tree to the earth with a judgment,
so that evil should fall on any who removed it again.
That, Squire, is the beginning in the deserts of the tale
that ended here, almost in this garden."

"And the end is about as reliable as the beginning, I should say,"
said Vane. "Yours is a nice plain tale for a small tea-party;
a quiet little bit of still-life, that is."

"What a queer, horrible story," exclaimed Barbara. "It makes
one feel like a cannibal."

"Ex Africa," said the lawyer, smiling. "It comes from a
cannibal country. I think it's the touch of the tar-brush,
that nightmare feeling that you don't know whether the hero
is a plant or a man or a devil. Don't you feel it sometimes
in 'Uncle Remus'?"

"True," said Paynter. "Perfectly true." And he looked at the lawyer
with a new interest. The lawyer, who had been introduced as Mr. Ashe,
was one of those people who are more worth looking at than most people
realize when they look. If Napoleon had been red-haired, and had bent