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Updated: June 11, 2025
"Then I suppose we'll have to go down fighting?" "I do not anticipate much of a fight." "You'll get as much as I can give you." "I'm not at all apprehensive." "And I'll begin by running your woods-boss out of the country." "Ah-h!" "You know why, of course those burl panels in your dining room. Rondeau felled a tree in our Valley of the Giants to get that burl for you, Colonel Pennington."
The soft glow of the candles in the old-fashioned silver candlesticks upon the table was reflected in the polished walls of the room-walls formed of panels of the most exquisitely patterned redwood burl Bryce Cardigan had ever seen. Also the panels were unusually large. Shirley Sumner's alert glance followed Bryce's as it swept around the room.
It threw up every cobweb, every burl and knot in the beams and the floor; till the shadows behind the flakes of rough plaster on the wall lay clear-cut as shadows of mountains on the photographed moon. "See! See! See!" hissed the Waters in full flood. "Yes, see for yourselves. Nothing has occurred. Can't you see?" The Rat, amazed, had fallen from his foothold and lay half-stunned on the floor.
"I know of but one tree in Humboldt County that could have produced such beautiful burl." For about a second Colonel Pennington met Bryce's glance unwaveringly; then he read something in his guest's eyes, and his glance shifted, while over his benign countenance a flush spread quickly. Bryce noted it, and his quickly roused suspicions were as quickly kindled into certainty.
Pennington flushed. "I defy you to prove that," he almost shouted. "Very well. I'll make Rondeau confess; perhaps he'll even tell me who sent him after the burl. Upon my word, I think you inspired that dastardly raid. At any rate, I know Rondeau is guilty, and you, as his employer and the beneficiary of his crime, must accept the odium." The Colonel's face went white.
The players who had bet that a four would be rolled before a seven had won. No one had lost. The start of a good run. Burl Ives / Colonel Sanders arranged the dice again and threw a six the point. Uproar. All were winners but those few who had bet "no pass." Oliver had his chips back. He stepped away. He had won, and he had lost. He wandered over to a roulette table.
He could fashion nothing better as a description of Cranston than, 'A refreshment-room sandwich; two great chunks of sin and a little slice of repentance between. Mr. Burl condemned it as crude, and for the moment the epigram was dropped. The Mallinsons arrived a week after the contest had begun.
By permitting the tree to stand and merely building a staging up to the burl, the latter could have been removed without vital injury to the tree whereas by destroying the tree the wretches had evidenced all too clearly to Bryce a wanton desire to add insult to injury. Bryce inspected the scars on the stump carefully.
When it was finally known that the long-vaunted furnishings were coming, the town had prepared to be dazzled by sets of black walnut, ornate with gilt lines, by patent rockers done in plush, by fashionable sofas, gay with upholstery of flowered ingrain, by bedroom sets of ash, stencilled adroitly with pink-and-blue flowers, or set with veneered panels of burl; by writing-desks of maple and music-stands of cherry with many spindles and frettings, by sideboards of finest new oak with brass handles and mirrors in the backs.
She gave an audible sigh of relief and patted her hands with the most perfunctory applause when her husband sat down. 'You are staying with Mr. Drake at the Three Nuns? she asked, turning to Fielding. 'Only till to-morrow. I leave by the night-train. 'Oh, you are going back! 'Yes. You see Drake and Burl are both here.
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