I.

The beetling crags that hang here and there above the gorge hold in

their rugged rock sculpture no facial similitudes, no suggestions. The

jagged outlines of shelving bluffs delineate no gigantic profile

against the sky beyond. One might seek far and near, and scan the vast

slope with alert and expectant gaze, and view naught of the semblance

that from time immemorial has given the mountain its name. Yet the

imagination needs but scant aid when suddenly the elusive simulacrum

is revealed to the eye. In a certain slant of the diurnal light, even

on bright nights at the full of the moon, sometimes in the uncanny

electric flicker smitten from a storm-cloud, a gigantic peaked

sinister face is limned on the bare, sandy slope, so definite, with

such fixity of lineament, that one is amazed that the perception of it

came no earlier, and is startled when it disappears.

Disappearing as completely as a fancy, few there are who have ever

seen it who have not climbed from the herder's trail across the

narrow wayside stream and up the rugged mountain slopes to the spot

where it became visible. There disappointment awaits the explorer. One

finds a bare and sterile space, from which the hardy chickweed can

scarcely gain the sustenance for timorous sproutings; a few

outcropping rocks; a series of transverse gullies here and there,

washed down to deep indentations; above the whole a stretch of burnt,

broken timber that goes by the name of "fire-scald," and is a relic of

the fury of the fire which was "set out" in the woods with the mission

to burn only the leaves and undergrowth, and which, in its

undisciplined strength, transcended its instructions, as it were, and

destroyed great trees. And this is all. But once more, at a coigne of

vantage on the opposite side of the gorge, and the experience can be

utilized in differentiating the elements that go to make up the weird

presentment of a human countenance. It is the fire-scald that suggests

the great peaked brown hood; the oblong sandy stretch forms the pallid

face; the ledges outline the nose and chin and brow; the eyes look out

from the deep indentations where the slope is washed by the currents

of the winter rains; and here and there the gullies draw heavy lines

and wrinkles. And when the wind is fresh and the clouds scud before

it, in the motion of their shadows the face will seem to mow at the

observer, until the belief comes very readily that it is the exact

counterpart of a witch's face.

Always the likeness is pointed out and insisted on by the denizens of

Witch-Face Mountain, as if they had had long and intimate acquaintance

with that sort of unhallowed gentry, and were especially qualified to

pronounce upon the resemblance.

"Ain't it jes' like 'em, now? Ain't it the very moral of a witch?"

Constant Hite demanded, one gusty day, when the shadows were a-flicker

in the sun, and the face seemed animated by the malice of mockery or

mirth, as he pointed it out to his companion with a sort of triumph in

its splenetic contortions.

He was a big, bluff fellow, to whose pride all that befell him seemed

to minister. He was proud of his length of limb, and his hundred and

eighty pounds of weight, and yet his slim appearance. "Ye wouldn't

believe it now, would ye?" he was wont to say when he stepped off the

scales at the store of the hamlet down in the Cove. "It's solid meat

an' bone an' muscle, my boy. Keep on the friendly side of one hunderd

an' eighty," with a challenging wink. He was proud of his bright brown

eyes, and his dark hair and mustache, and smiling, handsome face, and

his popularity among the class that he was pleased to denominate "gal

critters." He piqued himself upon his several endowments as a hardy

woodsman, his endurance, his sylvan craft, his pluck, and his luck and

his accurate aim. The buck--all gray and antlered, for it was

August--that hung across the horse, behind the saddle, gave token of

this keen exactitude in the tiny wound at the base of the ear, where

the rifle-ball had entered to pierce the brain; it might seem to the

inexpert that death had come rather from the gaping knife-stroke

across the throat, which was, however, a mere matter of butcher-craft.

He was proud of the good strong bay horse that he rode, which so

easily carried double, and proud of his big boots and long spurs; and

he scorned flimsy town clothes, and thought that good home-woven blue

jeans was the gear in which a man who was a man should clothe himself

withal. He glanced more than once at the different toggery of his

companion, evidently a man of cities, whom he had chanced to meet by

the wayside, and with whom he had journeyed more than a mile.

He had paused again and again to point out the "witch-face" to the

stranger, who at first could not discern it at all, and then when it

suddenly broke upon him could not be wiled away from it. He

dismounted, hitching his horse to a sapling, and up and down he

patrolled the rocky mountain path to study the face at various angles;

Constant Hite looking on the while with an important placid

satisfaction, as if he had invented the illusion.

"Some folks, though, can't abide sech ez witches," he said, with a

tolerant smile, as if he were able to defy their malevolence and make

light of it. "Ye see that cabin on the spur over yander around the

bend?" It looked very small and solitary from this height, and the

rail fences about its scanty inclosures hardly reached the dignity of

suggesting jackstraws. "Waal, the Hanways over thar hev a full view of

the old witch enny time she will show up at all. Folks in the

mountings 'low the day be onlucky when she appears on the slope thar.

The old folks at Hanway's will talk 'bout it cornsider'ble ef ye set

'em goin'; they hev seen thar time, an' it rests 'em some ter tell

'bout'n the spites they hev hed that they lay ter the witch-face."

The ugly fascination of the witch-face had laid hold, too, on the

stranger. Twice he had sought to photograph it, and Constant Hite had

watched him with an air of lenient indulgence to folly as he pottered

about, now adjusting his camera, now changing his place anew.

"And I believe I have got the whole amount of nothing at all," he said

at last, looking up breathlessly at the mountaineer. Albeit the wind

was fresh and the altitude great, the sun was hot on the unshaded red

clay path, and the nimble gyrations of the would-be artist brought

plentiful drops to his brow. He took off his straw hat, and mopped his

forehead with his handkerchief, while he stared wistfully at the siren

of his fancy, grimacing maliciously at him from the slope above. "If

the confounded old woman would hold still, and not disappear so

suddenly at the wrong minute, I'd have had her charming physiognomy

all correct. I believe I've spoiled my plates,--that's all." And once

more he mopped his bedewed forehead.

He was a man of thirty-five, perhaps, of the type that will never look

old or grow perceptibly gray. His hair was red and straight, and cut

close to his head. He had a long mustache of the same sanguine tint.

The sun had brought the blood near the surface of his thin skin, and

he looked hot and red, and thoroughly exasperated. His brown eyes were

disproportionately angry, considering the slight importance of his

enterprise. He was evidently a man of keen, quick temper, easily

aroused and nervous. His handsome, well-groomed horse was fractious,

and difficult for so impatient a rider to control. His equestrian

outfit once more attracted the covert glance of Con Hite, whose

experience and observation could duplicate no such attire. He was

tall, somewhat heavily built, and altogether a sufficiently stalwart

specimen of the genus "town man."

"I'll tell you what I'll do!" he exclaimed suddenly. "I'll sketch the

whole scene!"

"Now you're shoutin'," said Con Hite capably, as if he had always

advocated this method of solving the difficulty. His interlocutor

could not for a moment have dreamed that he had never before seen a

camera, had never heard of a photograph, had not the least idea of

what the process of sketching might be which he so boldly approved;

nay, the very phrase embodying his encouragement of the project was

foreign to his vocabulary,--a bit of sophisticated slang which he had

adopted from his companion's conversation, and readily assimilated.

"You stay just where you are!" cried the stranger, his enthusiasm

rising to the occasion; "just that pose,--that pose precisely."

He ran swiftly across the path to remove the inefficient camera from

the foreground, and in a moment was seated on a log by the wayside,

his quick eye scanning the scene: the close file of the ranges about

the horizon, one showing above another, and one more faintly blue

than another, for thus the distance was defined; then the amphitheatre

of the Cove, the heavy bronze-green slopes of the mountains, all with

ripple marks of clear chrome-green ruffling in the wake of the wind;

in the middle distance the still depths of the valley below, with

shadows all a-slumber and silent, and on the projecting spur the

quiet, lonely little house, so slight a suggestion of the presence of

man amidst the majestic dominance of nature; here, to the right,

across the savage gorge, with its cliffs and with its currents in the

deep trough, the nearest slope of the mountain, with the great gaunt

bare space showing that face of ill omen, sibylline, sinister,

definite indeed,--he wondered how his eyes were holden that he should

not have discerned it at once; and in the immediate foreground the

equestrian figure of the mountaineer, booted and spurred, the very

"moral," as Hite would have called it, of an athlete, with his fine

erect pose distinct against the hazy perspective, his expression of

confident force, the details of his handsome features revealed by the

brim of his wide black hat turned up in front.

"It's a big subject, I know; I can't get it all in. I shall only

suggest it. Just keep that pose, will you? Hold the horse still.

'Stand the storm, it won't be long!'" the artist said, smiling with

renewed satisfaction as his pencil, not all inapt, went briskly to

work on the horizontal lines of the background.

But it was longer than he had thought, so still sat the contemplative

mountaineer, so alluring were the details of the landscape. The

enthusiasm of the amateur is always a more urgent motive power than

the restrained and utilitarian industry of the professional.

Few sworn knights of the crayon would have sat sketching so long in

that temperature as he did, with the sun blazing through his straw hat

and his blood mustering under his thin skin; but he stopped at a point

short of sunstroke, and it was with a tumultuous sense of success that

he at last arose, and, with the sketch-book still open, walked across

the road and laid it on the pommel of the mountaineer's saddle.

Constant Hite took it up suspiciously and looked at it askance. It is

to be doubted if ever before he had seen a picture, unless perchance

in the primary reading-book of his callow days at the public school,

spasmodically opened at intervals at the "church house" in the Cove.

He continued to gravely gaze at the sketch, held sideways and almost

reversed, for some moments.

"Bless Gawd! hyar's Whitefoot's muzzle jes' ez nat'ral--an'

_Me_--waal, sir! don't _I_ look proud!" he cried suddenly, with a note

of such succulent vanity, so finely flavored a pride, that the

stranger could but laugh at the zest of his triumph.

"Do you see the witch-face?" he demanded.

"Hesh! hesh!" cried the mountaineer hilariously. "Don't 'sturb me

'bout yer witch-face. Ef thar ain't the buck,--yes, toler'ble

fat,--an' with all his horns! An' look at my boot,--actially the spur

on it! An' my hat turned up;" he raised his flattered hand to the brim

as if to verify its position.

"You didn't know you were so good looking, hey?" suggested the amused

town man.

"My Lord, naw!" declared Hite, laughing at himself, yet laughing

delightedly. "I dunno _how_ the gals make out to do without me at

all!"

The pleased artist laughed, too. "Well, hand it over," he said, as he

reached out for the book. "We must be getting out of this sun. I'm not

used to it, you see."

He put his foot in the stirrup as he spoke, and as he swung himself

into the saddle the mountaineer reluctantly closed and relinquished

the book. "I'd like ter see it agin, some time or other," he observed.

He remembered this wish afterward, and how little he then imagined

where and in what manner he was destined to see it again.

They rode on together into the dense woods, leaving the wind and the

sunshine and the flying clouds fluctuating over the broad expanse of

the mountains, and the witch-face silently mowing and grimacing at the

world below, albeit seen by no human being except perchance some

dweller at the little house on the spur, struck aghast by this

unwelcome apparition evoked by the necromancy of the breeze and the

sheen and the shadow, marking this as an unlucky day.

"That's right smart o' a cur'osity, ain't it?" said Constant Hite

complacently, as they jogged along. "When the last gover'mint survey

fellers went through hyar, they war plumb smitten by the ole 'oman,

an' spent cornsider'ble time a-stare-gazin' at her. They 'lowed they

hed never seen the beat."

"What was the survey for?" asked the town man, with keen mundane

interest.

Constant Hite was rarely at a loss. When other men were fain to come

to a pause for the lack of information, the resources of his agile

substitutions and speculations were made manifest. "They war jes'

runnin' a few lines hyar an' thar," he said negligently. "They lef'

some tall striped poles planted in the ground, red an' sich colors,

ter mark the way; an' them mounting folks over yander in the

furderest coves,--they air powerful ahint the times,--they hed never

hearn o' sech ez a survey, noway, an' the poles jes' 'peared ter them

sprung up thar like Jonah's gourd in a single night, ez ef they kem

from seed; an' the folks, they 'lowed 't war the sign o' a new war."

He laughed lazily at the uninstructed terrors of the unsophisticated

denizens of the "furderest coves." "They'd gather around an'

stare-gaze at the poles, an' wonder if they'd hev ter fight the Rebs

agin; them folks is mos'ly Union." Then his interest in the subject

quickening, "Them survey fellers, they ondertook, too, ter medjure the

tallness o' some o' the mountings fur the gover'mint. Now what good is

that goin' ter do the Nunited States?" he resumed grudgingly. "The

mountings kin be medjured by the eye,--look a-yander." He pointed with

the end of his whip at a section of the horizon, visible between the

fringed and low-swaying boughs of hemlock and fir as the trail swept

closer to the verge of the range, on which was softly painted, as on

ivory and with an enameled lustre, two or three great azure domes,

with here and there the high white clouds of a clear day nestling

flakelike on the summits. "They air jes' all-fired high, an' that's

all. Do it make 'em seem enny taller ter say they air six thousand or

seben thousand feet? Man ain't used ter medjurin' by the thousand

feet. When he gits ter the ground he goes by the pole. I dunno how

high nor how long a thousand feet air. The gover'mint jes' want ter

spend a leetle money, I reckon. It 'pears toler'ble weak-kneed in its

mind, wunst in a while. But ef it wants ter fool money away, it's

mighty well able ter afford sech. It hev got a power o' ways a-comin'

at money,--we all know that, we all know that."

He said this with a gloomy inflection and a downward look that might

have implied a liability for taxes beyond his willingness to pay. But,

barring the assessment on a small holding of mountain land, Constant

Hite seemed in case to contribute naught to his country's exchequer.

"It needs all it can get, now," replied the stranger casually, but

doubtless from a sophisticated knowledge, as behooved a reader of the

journals of the day, of the condition of the treasury.

He could not account for the quick glance of alarm and enmity which

the mountaineer cast upon him. It roused in him a certain constraint

which he had not experienced earlier in their chance association. It

caused him to remember that this was a lonely way and a wild country.

He was an alien to the temper and sentiment of the people. He felt

suddenly that sense of distance in mind and spirit which is the true

isolation of the foreigner, and which even an identity of tongue and

kindred cannot annul. Looking keenly into the mountaineer's

half-averted, angry, excited face, he could not for his life discern

how its expression might comport with the tenor of the casual

conversation which had elicited it. He did not even dimly surmise that

his allusion to the finances of the government could be construed as a

justification of the whiskey tax, generally esteemed in the mountains

a measure of tyrannous oppression; that from his supposititious

advocacy of it he had laid himself liable to the suspicion of being

himself of the revenue force,--his mission here to spy out

moonshiners; that his companion's mind was even now dwelling anew, and

with a rueful difference, on that masterly drawing of himself in the

stranger's sketch-book.

"But what do that prove, though?" Hite thought, a certain hope

springing up with the joy of the very recollection of the simulacrum

of the brilliant rural coxcomb adorning the page. "Jes' that me is

_Me_. All he kin say 'bout me air that hyar I be goin' home from

huntin' ter kerry my game. _That_ ain't agin the law, surely."

The "revenuers," he argued, too, never rode alone, as did this man,

and spies and informers were generally of the vicinage. The stranger

was specially well mounted, and as his puzzled cogitation over the

significant silence that had supervened between them became so marked

as to strike Hite's attention, the mountaineer sought to nullify it by

an allusion to the horse. "That feller puts down his feet like a

kitten," he said admiringly. "I never seen nuthin' ez wears shoes so

supple. Shows speed, I s'pose? Built fur it."

"Makes pretty fair time," responded the stranger without enthusiasm.

The doubt, perplexity, and even suspicion which his companion's manner

had evoked were not yet dissipated, and the allusion to the horse, and

the glow of covetous admiration in Hite's face as his eyes dwelt upon

the finely fashioned creature so deftly moving along, brought suddenly

to his mind sundry exploits of a gang of horse-thieves about these

coves and mountains, detailed in recent newspapers. These rumors had

been esteemed by urban communities in general as merely sensational,

and had attracted scant attention. Now, with their recurrence to his

recollection, their verisimilitude was urged upon him. The horse he

rode was a valuable animal, and moreover, here, ten or twenty miles

from a habitation, would prove a shrewd loss indeed. Nevertheless, it

was impossible to shake off or evade his companion; the wilderness,

with its jungle of dense rhododendron undergrowth on either side of

the path, was impenetrable. There was no alternative practicable. He

could only go on and hope for the best.

A second glance at the mountaineer's honest face served in some sort

as reassurance as to the probity of his character. Gradually a vivid

interest in the environment, which had earlier amazed and amused

Constant Hite, began to be renewed. The stranger looked about to

identify the growths of the forest with a keen, fresh enthusiasm, as

if he were meeting old friends. Once, with a sudden flush and an

intent eye, he flung the reins to the man whom he had half suspected

of being a horse-thief ten minutes before, to hastily dismount and

uproot a tiny wayside weed, which he breathlessly and triumphantly

explained to the wondering mountaineer was a rare plant which he had

never seen; he carefully bestowed it between the leaves of his

sketch-book before he resumed the saddle, and Hite was moved to ask,

"How d' ye know its durned comical name, ef ye never seen it afore? By

Gosh! it's got a name longer 'n its tap-root!"

The town man only laughed a trifle at this commentary upon the

botanical Latin nomenclature, and once more he was leaning from his

saddle, peering down the aisles of the forest with a smiling,

expectant interest, as if they held for him some enchantment of which

duller mortals have no ken. A brown geode, picked up in the channel of

a summer-dried stream, showed an interior of sparkling quartz crystal,

when a blow had shattered it, which Hite had never suspected, often as

he had seen the rugged spherical stones lying along the banks. All the

rocks had a thought for the stranger, close to his heart and quick on

his tongue, and as Hite, half skeptical, half beguiled, listened, his

suspicion of the man as a "revenuer" began to fade.

"The revenuers ain't up ter no sech l'arnin' ez this," he said to

himself, with a vicarious pride. "The man, though he never war in the

mountings afore, knows ez much about 'em ez ef he hed bodaciously

built 'em. Fairly smelt that thar cave over t' other side the ridge

jes' now, I reckon; else how'd he know 't war thar?"

A certain hollow reverberation beneath the horse's hoofs had caught

his companion's quick ear. "Have you ever been in this cave

hereabout?" he had asked, to Hite's delighted amazement at this

brilliant feat of mental jugglery, as it seemed to him.

Even the ground, when the repetitious woods held no new revelation of

tree or flower, or hazy, flickering insect dandering through the

yellow sunshine and the olive-tinted shadow and the vivid green

foliage, the very ground had a word for him.

"This formation here," he said, leaning from his saddle to watch the

path slipping along beneath his horse's hoofs, like the unwinding of

coils of brown ribbon, "is like that witch-face slope that we saw

awhile ago. It seems to occur at long intervals in patches. You see

down that declivity how little grows, how barren."

The break in the density of the woods served to show the mountains,

blue and purple and bronze, against the horizon; an argosy of white

clouds under full sail; the Cove, shadowy, slumberous, so deep down

below; and the oak leaves above their heads, all dark and sharply

dentated against the blue.

Hite had suddenly drawn in his horse. An eager light was in his eye, a

new idea in his mind. He felt himself on the verge of imminent

discovery.

"Now," said he, lowering his voice mysteriously, and laying his hand

on the bridle of the other's horse,--and so far had the allurements of

science outstripped merely mundane considerations that the stranger's

recent doubts and anxieties touching his animal were altogether

forgotten, and he was conscious only of a responsive expectant

interest,--"air thar ennything in that thar 'formation,' ez ye calls

it ez could gin out fire?"

"No, certainly not," said the man of science, surprised, and marking

the eager, insistent look in Hite's eyes. Both horses were at a

standstill now. A jay-bird clanged out its wild woodsy cry from the

dense shadows of a fern-brake far in the woods on the right, and they

heard the muffled trickling of water, falling on mossy stones hard by,

from a spring so slight as to be only a silver thread. The trees far

below waved in the wind, and a faint dryadic sibilant singing sounded

a measure or so, and grew fainter in the lulling of the breeze, and

sunk to silence.

"Ennyhow," persisted Hite, "won't sech yearth gin out light

somehows,--in some conditions sech ez ye talk 'bout?" he added

vaguely.

"Spontaneously? Certainly not," the stranger replied, preserving his

erect pose of inquiring and expectant attention.

"Why, then the mounting's 'witched sure enough,--that's all," said

Hite desperately. He cast off his hold on the stranger's horse, caught

up his reins anew, and made ready to fare onward forthwith.

"Does fire ever show there?" demanded his companion wonderingly.

"It's a plumb meracle, it's a plumb mystery," declared Constant Hite,

as they went abreast into the dense shadow of the closing woods. "I

asked ye this 'kase ez ye 'peared ter sense so much in rocks, an'

weeds, an' birds, an' sile, what ain't revealed ter the mortal eye in

gineral, ye mought be able ter gin some nateral reason fur that thar

sile up thar round the old witch-face ter show fire or sech. But it's

beyond yer knowin' or the knowin' o' enny mortal, I reckon."

"How does the fire show?" persisted the man of science, with keen and

attentive interest. "And who has seen it?"

"Stranger," said Hite, lowering his voice, "I hev viewed it, myself.

But fust it war viewed by the Hanways,--them ez lives in that house on

the spur what prongs out o' the range nigh opposite the slope o' the

Witch-Face. One dark night,--thar war no moon, but thar warn't no

storm, jes' a dull clouded black sky, ez late August weather will show

whenst it be heavy an' sultry,--all of a suddenty, ez the Hanway

fambly war settin' on the porch toler'ble late in the night, the air

bein' close in the house, the darter, Narcissa by name, she calls out,

'Look! look! I see the witch-face!' An' they all start up an' stare

over acrost the deep black gorge. An' thar, ez true ez life, war the

witch-face glimmerin' in the midst o' the black night, and agrinnin'

at 'em an' a-mockin' at 'em, an' lighted up ez ef by fire."

"And did no one discover the origin of the fire?" asked the stranger.

"Thar war no fire!" Constant Hite paused impressively. Then he went on

impulsively, full of his subject: "Ben Hanway kem over ter the

still-house arter me, an' tergether we went ter examinate. But the

bresh is powerful thick, an' the way is long, an' though we seen a

flicker wunst or twict ez we-uns pushed through the deep woods, 't war

daybreak 'fore we got thar, an' nare sign nor smell o' fire in all the

woods could we find; nare scorch nor singe on the ground, not even a

burnt stick or chunk ter tell the tale; everythin' ez airish an' cool

an' jewy an' sweet ter the scent ez a summer mornin' is apt ter be."

"How often has this phenomenon occurred?" said the stranger coolly,

but with a downcast, thoughtful eye and a pursed-up lip, as if he were

less surprised than cogitating.

"Twict only, fur we hev kep' an eye on the old witch, Ben an' me. Ben

wants a road opened out up hyar, stiddier jes' this herder's trail

through the woods. Ben dunno how it mought strike folks ef they war

ter know ez the witch-face hed been gin over ter sech cur'ous ways

all of a suddenty. They mought take it fur a sign agin the road, sech

ez b'lieves in the witch-face givin' bad luck." After a pause, "Then

_I_ viewed it wunst,--wunst in the dead o' the night. I war goin' home

from the still, an' I happened ter look up, an' I seen the

witch-face,--the light jes' dyin' out, jes' fadin' out. She didn't hev

time ter make more 'n two or three faces at me, an' then she war gone

in the night. It's a turr'ble-lookin' thing at night, stranger. So ye

can't tell what makes it,--the sile, or what?"

He turned himself quite sideways as he spoke, one hand on the carcass

of the deer behind the saddle, the other on his horse's neck, the

better to face his interlocutor and absorb his scientific

speculations. And in that moment an odd idea occurred to him,--nay, a

conviction. He perceived that his companion knew and understood the

origin of the illumination; and more,--that he would not divulge it.

"The soil? Assuredly not the soil," the stranger said mechanically. He

was looking down, absorbed in thought, secret, mysterious, yet not

devoid of a certain inexplicable suggestion of triumph; for a subtle

cloaked elation, not unlike a half-smile, was on his face, although

its intent, persistent expression intimated the following out of a

careful train of ideas.

"Then what is it?" demanded Hite arrogantly, as if he claimed the

right to know.

"I really couldn't undertake to say," the stranger responded, his

definite manner so conclusive an embargo on further inquiries that

Hite felt rising anew all his former doubts of the man, and his fears

and suspicions as to the errand that had brought him hither.

Could it be possible, he argued within himself, that to the agency of

"revenuers" was due that mysterious glow, more brilliant than any

ordinary fire, steady, suffusive, continuous, rising in the dark

wilderness, in the deep midnight, to reveal that ominous face

overlooking all the countryside, with subtle flickers of laughter

running athwart its wonted contortions, more weird and sinister in

this ghastly glare than by day? And what significance might attend

these strange machinations? Revolving the idea, he presently shook his

head in conclusive negation as he rode along. The approach of raiders

was silent and noiseless and secret. Whatever the mystery might

portend it was not thus that they would advertise their presence,

promoting the escape of the objects of their search. Hite's open and

candid mind could compass no adequate motive for concealment in all

the ways of the world but the desire to evade the revenue law, or to

practice the shifts and quirks necessary to the capture of the wary

and elusive moonshiner. Nevertheless, it was impossible, on either of

these obvious bases, to account for the fact of something withheld in

the stranger's manner, some secret exultant knowledge of the

phenomenon which baffled the mountaineer's speculation. Hite, all

unaware that in his impulsive speech he had disclosed the fact of his

hazardous occupation, began to feel that, considering his liability to

the Federal law for making brush whiskey, he had somewhat transcended

the limit of his wonted hardihood in so long bearing this stranger

company along the tangled ways of the herder's trail through the

wilderness. "He _mought_ be a revenuer arter all, an' know all about

me. The rest o' the raiders mought be a-waitin' an' a-layin' fur me at

enny turn," he reflected. "Leastwise he knows a deal more'n he's

a-goin' ter tell."

He drew up his horse as they neared an open bluff where the beetling

rocks jutted out like a promontory above the sea of foliage below.

They might judge of the long curvature of the conformation of the

range just here, for on the opposite height was visible at intervals

the road they had traveled, winding in and out among the trees,

ascending the mountain in serpentine coils; they beheld the Cove

beneath from a new angle, and further yet the barren cherty slope on

which, despite the distance, the witch-face could still be discerned

by eyes practiced in marking its lineaments, trained to trace the

popular fantasy. The stranger caught sight of it at the same moment

that Hite lifted his hand toward it.

"Thar it is!" Hite exclaimed, "fur all the Cove's a shadder, an' fur

all the wind's a breath."

For clouds had thickened over the sky, and much of the world was gray

beneath, and the scene had dulled in tint and spirit since last they

had had some large outlook upon it. Only on the slopes toward the east

did the sunshine rest, and in the midst of a sterile, barren slant it

flickered on that semblance of ill omen.

"An onlucky day, stranger," Hite said slowly.

The man of science had drawn in his restive horse, and had turned with

a keen, freshened interest toward the witch-face. It was with a look

of smiling expectancy that he encountered the aspect of snarling

mockery, half visible or half imaginary, of that grim human

similitude. The mountaineer's brilliant dark eyes dwelt upon him

curiously. However, if he had forborne from prudential motives from

earlier asking the stranger's name and vocation, lest more than a

casual inquisitiveness be thereby implied, exciting suspicion, such

queries were surely not in order at the moment of departure. For Hite

had resolved on parting company. "An onlucky day," he reiterated, "an

onlucky day. An' this be ez far ez we spen' it tergether. I turn off

hyar."

So ever present with him was his spirituous conscience--it could

hardly be called a bad conscience--that he half expected his companion

to demur, and the posse of a deputy marshal to spring up from their

ambush in the laurel about them. But the stranger, still with a flavor

of preoccupation in his manner, only expressed a polite regret to say

farewell so early, and genially offered to shake hands. As with

difficulty he forced his horse close to the mountaineer's saddle, Hite

looked at the animal with a touch of disparagement. "That thar beastis

hev got cornsider'ble o' the devil in him; he'll trick ye some day; ye

better look out. Waal, far'well stranger, far'well."

The words had a regretful cadence. Whether because of the unwonted

interest which the stranger had excited, or the reluctance to

relinquish his curiosity, still ungratified, or the pain of parting to

an impressionable nature, whose every emotion is acute, Hite hesitated

when he had gone some twenty yards straight up the slope above,

pushing his horse along a narrow path through the jungle of the

laurel, and turned in his saddle to call out again, "Far'well!"

The stranger, still at the point where Hite had quitted him, waved his

hand and smiled. The jungle closed about the mountaineer, once more

pushing on, and still the smiling eyes dwelt on the spot where he had

disappeared. "Farewell, my transparent friend," the stranger said,

with a half-laugh. "I hope the day is not unlucky enough to put a

deputy marshal on your track." And with one more glance at the

witch-face, he gathered the reins in his hand and rode on alone along

the narrow tangled ways of the herder's trail.

Now and again, as the day wore on, Constant Hite was seized with a

sense of something wanting, and he presently recognized the deficit as

the expectation of the ill fortune which should befall the time, and

which still failed to materialize. So strong upon him was the

persuasion of evil chances rife in the air to-day that he set himself

as definitely to thwart and baffle them as if rationally cognizant of

their pursuit. He would not return to his wonted vocation at the

distillery, but carried his venison home, where his father, a very old

man, with still the fervors of an aesthetic pride, pointed out with

approbation the evidence of a fair shot in the wound at the base of

the buck's ear, and his mother, active, wiry, practical-minded, noted

the abundance of fat. "He fed hisself well whilst he war about it,"

she commented, "an' now he'll feed us well. What diff'unce do it make

whether Con's rifle-ball hit whar he aimed ter do or no, so he fetched

him down somewhar?"

The afternoon passed peacefully away. It seemed strangely long. The

sun, barring a veiled white glister in a clouded gray sky, betokening

the solar focus, disappeared; the wind fell; the very cicadae, so loud

in the latter days of August, were dulled to long intervals of

silence; in the distance, a tree-toad called and called, with

plaintive iteration, for rain. "Ye'll git it, bubby," Con addressed

the creature, as he stood in the cornfield--a great yellow

stretch--pulling fodder, and binding the long pliant blades into

bundles. The clouds still thickened; the heat grew oppressive; the

long rows of the corn were motionless, save the rustling of the blades

as Hite tore them from the stalk. Even his mother's spinning-wheel,

wont to briskly whir through the long afternoons, from the window of

the little cabin on the rise, grew silent, and his father dozed

beneath the gourd vines on the porch.

The sun went down at last, and the gray day imperceptibly merged into

the gray dusk. Then came the lingering darkness, with a flicker of

fireflies and broad wan flares of heat lightning. Con woke once in the

night to hear the rain on the roof. The wind was blaring near at hand.

In its large, free measures, like some deliberate adagio, there was

naught of menace; but when he slept again, and awoke to hear its voice

anew, his heart was plunging with sudden fright. A human utterance was

in its midst,--a human voice calling his name through the gusty night

and the sibilant rush of the rain from the eaves. He listened for a

moment at the roof-room window. He recognized with a certain relief

the tones of the constable of the district. He opened the shutter.

A new day was near to breaking. He saw the wan sky above the periphery

of dense dark woods about the clearing. A brown dusk obscured the

familiar landmarks, but beneath a gnarled old apple-tree by the gate

several men were dimly suggested, and another, more distinct, by the

wood-pile, was in the act of gathering a handful of chips to throw at

the shutter again. He desisted as he marked the face at the window.

"Kem down," he said gruffly, clearing his throat in embarrassment.

"Kem down, Constant. No use roustin' out the old folks."

"What do you want?" asked Hite in a low voice, his heart seeming to

stand still in suspense.

The constable hesitated. The cold rain dashed into Hite's face. The

rail fences, in zigzag lines, were coming into view. A mist was

floating white against the dark densities of the woods. He heard the

water splashing from the eaves heavily into the gullies below, and

then the constable once more raucously cleared his throat.

"Thar's a man," he drawled, "a stranger hyarabouts, killed yestiddy in

the bridle-path. The cor'ner hev kem, an' he 'lows ye know suthin'

'bout'n it, Constant,--'bout'n the killin' of him. I be sent ter fetch

ye."