A chimney, half of stone, half of clay and stick, stood starkly up in
the gray rain and the swooping, shifting gray fog. It marked the site
of a cabin burned long ago, and in such melancholy wise as it might it
told of the home that had been. Now and again far-away lightning
flashed on its fireless hearth; a vacant bird's-nest in a cranny
duplicated the suggestions of desertion; the cold mist crept in and
curled up out of the smokeless flue with a mockery of semblance. The
fire that had wrought its devastating will in the black midnight in
the deep wilderness, so far from rescue or succor, had swiftly burned
out its quick fury, and was sated with the humble household
belongings. The barn, rickety, weather-beaten, deserted, and vacant,
still remained,--of the fashion common to the region, with a loft
above, and an open wagonway between the two compartments below,--and
it was here that the inquest was held. It was near the scene of the
tragedy, and occasionally a man would detach himself from the slow,
dawdling, depressed-looking group of mountaineers who loitered in the
open space beneath the loft, and traverse the scant distance down the
bridle-path to gaze at the spot where the stranger's body had lain,
whence it had been conveyed to the nearest shelter at hand, the old
barn, where the coroner's jury were even now engaged in their
deliberations. Sometimes, another, versed in all the current rumors,
would follow to point out to the new-comer the details, show how the
rain had washed the blood away, and fearfully mark the tokens of
frantic clutches at the trees as the man had been torn from his horse.
The animal had vanished utterly; even the prints of his hoofs were
soon obliterated by the torrents and the ever-widening puddles. And
thus had arisen the suspicion of ambush and foul play, and the
implication of the mysterious gang of horse-thieves, whose rumored
exploits seemed hardly so fabulous with the disappearance of the
animal and the violent death of the rider in evidence. The locality
offered no other suggestion, and it was but a brief interval before
the way would be retraced by the awe-stricken observer, noting with a
deep interest impossible hitherto all the environment: the stark
chimney of the vanished house, monumental in the weed-grown waste;
the dripping forest; the roof of the barn, sleek and shining, and with
rain pouring down the slant of its clapboards and splashing from its
eaves; the groups of horses hitched to the scraggy apple-trees of the
deserted homestead; and here and there the white canvas cover of an
ox-wagon, with its yoke of steers standing with low-hung heads in the
downpour. The pallid circling mists enveloped the world, and limited
the outlook to a periphery of scant fifty paces; occasionally becoming
tenuous, as if to suggest the dark looming of the mountain across the
narrow valley, and the precipice close at hand behind the building,
then once more intervening, white and dense of texture, forming a
background which imparted a singular distinctness to the figures
grouped in the open space of the barn beneath the shadowy loft.
The greater number of the gathering had been summoned hither by a
sheer curiosity as coercive as a subpoena, but sundry of the group
were witnesses, reluctant, anxious, with a vague terror of the law,
and an ignorant sense of an impending implication that set both craft
and veracity at defiance. They held their heads down ponderingly, as
they stood; perhaps rehearsing mentally the details of their meagre
knowledge of the event, or perhaps canvassing the aspect of certain
points which might impute to them blame or arouse suspicion, and
endeavoring to compass shifty evasions, to transform or suppress them
in their forthcoming testimony. At random, one might have
differentiated the witnesses from the mass of the ordinary mountaineer
type by the absorbed eye, or the meditative moving lip unconsciously
forming unspoken words, or the fallen dismayed jaw as of the victim of
circumstantial evidence. It was a strange chance, the death that had
met this casual wayfarer at their very doors, and one might not know
how the coroner would interpret it. His power to commit a suspect
added to his terrors, and gave to the capable, astute official a
mundane formidableness that overtopped the charnel-house flavor of his
more habitual duties. He was visible through the unchinked logs of the
little room where the inquest was in progress, barely spacious enough
to contain the bier, the jury, and the witness under examination; and
yet so great was the sound of the rain outside and the stir of the
assemblage that little or naught was overheard without.
Now and again the waiting witnesses looked with doubt and curiosity
and suspicion at a new-comer, with an obvious disposition to hope and
believe that others knew more of the matter than they, and thus were
more liable to accusation. Occasionally, a low-toned, husky query
would be met by a curt rejoinder suggesting a cautious reticence and a
rising enmity, blockading all investigation save the obligatory
inquisition of a coroner's jury. An object of ever-recurrent scrutiny
was a stranger in the vicinity, who had been subpoenaed also. The
facial effect of culture and sophistication was illustrated in his
inexpressive, controlled, masklike countenance. He was generally known
as the "valley man with the lung complaint," who had built a cabin on
the mountain during the summer, banished hither by the advice of his
physician for the value to the lungs of the soft, healing air. He wore
a brown derby hat, a fawn-colored suit, and a brown overcoat, with the
collar upturned. He was blond and young, and so impassive was his
sober, decorous aspect that the aptest detective could have discerned
naught of significance as he stood, quite silent and composed, in the
centre of the place where it was dry, exempt from the gusts of rain
that the wind now and again flung in spray upon the outermost members
of the group, one hand in the pocket of his trousers, the other
toying with a cigar which so far he held unlighted.
Of the two women present, one, seated upon the beam of a broken
plough, refuse of the agricultural industry long ago collapsed here,
was calmly smoking her pipe,--a wrinkled, unimpressed personality, who
had seen many years, and whose manner might imply that all these
chances of life and death came in the gross, and that existence was a
medley at best. The other, a witness, was young. More than once the
"valley man" cast a covert glance at her as, clad in a brown homespun
dress, she leaned against the log wall, her face, which was very pale,
half turned toward it, as if to hide the features already much
obscured by the white sunbonnet drawn far over it. One arm was lifted,
and her hand was passed between the unchinked logs in a convulsive
grasp upon them. Her figure was tall and slender, and expressive in
its rigid constraint; it was an attitude of despair, of repulsion, of
fear. It might have implied grief, or remorse, or anxiety. Often the
eyes of the prescient victims of circumstantial evidence rested
dubiously upon her. To the great majority of men, the presence of
women in affairs of business is an intrusive evil of times out of
joint. Now, since matters of life and liberty were in the balance, the
primitive denizens of Witch-Face Mountain felt that the admission of
Narcissa Hanway's testimony to consideration and credibility evinced
an essential defect in the law of the land, and the fallibility of all
human reasoning. What distorted impression might not so appalling an
event make upon one so young, so feminine, so inexperienced! What
exaggerated wild thing might she not say, unintentionally inculpating
half Witch-Face Mountain in robbery and murder!
Constant Hite, as he bluffly entered the passageway, his head up, his
eyes wide and bright, his vigorous step elastic and light, gave no
token of the spiritual war he had waged as he came. Already he felt in
great jeopardy. On account of his illicit vocation he could ill abide
the scrutiny of the law. With scant proof, he argued, a moonshiner
might be suspected of highway robbery and murder. As he had journeyed
hither with the constable and his fellows, who conserved the air of
disinterested spectators, but who he knew had been summoned to aid the
officer in case he should evade or delay, when he would have been
forthwith arrested, he had been sorely tempted to deny having ever
seen the stranger, in whose company he had spent an hour or so of the
previous day. He had been able to put the lie from him with a normal
moral impulse. He did not appreciate the turpitude of perjury. He
esteemed it only a natural lie invested with pomp and circumstance;
and the New Testament on which he should be sworn meant no more to his
unlettered conscience than the horn-book, since he knew as little of
its contents. But a lie is a skulking thing, and he had scant affinity
with it.
He thought, with a sort of numb wonderment, that it was strange he
should feel no more compassion for the object stretched out here,
dumb, dead, bruised, and bloody, which so short a space since he had
seen full of life and interest, animated by a genial courtesy and
graced with learning and subtle insight; now so unknowing, so
unlettered, so blind! Whither went this ethereal investiture of
life?--for it was not mere being; one might exist hardily enough
without it. Did the darkness close over it, too, or was it not the
germ of the soul, the budding of that wider knowledge and finer
aspiration to flower hereafter in rarer air? He did not know; he only
vaguely cared, and he reproached himself dully that he cared no more.
For he--his life was threatened! With the renewal of the thought he
experienced a certain animosity toward the man that he should not have
known enough to take better care of himself. Why must he needs die
here, in this horrible unexplained way, and leave other men, chance
associates, to risk stretching hemp for murder? He felt his strong
life beating in his throat almost to suffocation at the mere
suggestion. Again the lie tempted him, to be again withstood; and as
he strode into the room upon the calling of his name, he saw how
futile, how flimsy, was every device, for, fluttering in the coroner's
hand, he recognized the sketch of the "Witch-Face" which the dead man
had made, and the masterly drawing of his own imposing figure in the
foreground. He had forgotten it utterly for the time being. In the
surprise and confusion that had beset him, it had not occurred to him
to speculate how he had chanced to be subpoenaed, how the idea could
have occurred to the coroner that he knew aught of the stranger. As he
stood against the batten door, the pale light from the interstices of
the unchinked logs, all the grayer because it alternated with the
sombre timbers, falling upon his face and figure, his hat upturned in
front, revealing his brow with a forelock of straight black hair, his
brilliant dark eyes, and his distinctly cut definite features, the
sketch-book was swiftly passed from one to another of the jury,
reluctantly relinquished here and there, and more than once eliciting
half-smothered exclamations of delighted wonder from the
unsophisticated mountaineers, as they glanced back and forth from the
man leaning against the door to the counterfeit presentment on the
paper.
Constant Hite experienced a glow of vicarious pride as he remembered
the satisfaction that the artist had taken in the sketch, and he
wished that that still thing on the bier could know how his work, most
wonderful it seemed, was appreciated. And then, with a swift revulsion
of feeling, he realized that it was this which had entrapped him; this
bit of paper had brought him into fear and trouble and risk of his
life. The man might be of the revenue force. He might have encountered
other moonshiners, and thus have come to his violent death. If this
were his vocation, it brought Hite into dark suspicion by virtue of
the fact, known to a few of the neighborhood, that he himself was a
distiller of brush whiskey. No one else had seen the stranger till the
finding of the body. He gathered this from the trend of the inquiry
after the formal preliminary queries. The seven men, as they sat
together on a bench made by passing a plank between the logs of the
wall diagonally across the corner of the room, chewed meditatively
their quids of tobacco, and now and then spat profusely on the ground,
their faces growing more perplexed and graver as the examination
progressed.
When Hite disclosed the circumstance that on the previous day he had
encountered a "stranger man" near the "Witch-Face," there was a
palpable sensation among them. They glanced at one another meaningly,
and a sudden irritation was perceptible in the coroner's manner as he
sat in a rickety chair near the improvised bier. He was a citizen of
the valley region, a trifle more sophisticated than the jury, and
disposed to seriously deprecate the introduction of any morbid or
superstitious element into so grave a matter. He had a bald head, a
lean face, the bones very clearly defined about the temple and cheek
and jaw, a scanty grizzled beard; and he was dressed somewhat farmer
fashion, in blue jeans, with his boots drawn high over his trousers,
but with a stiffly starched white shirt,--the collar and cravat in
evidence, the cuffs, however, vanished up the big sleeves of his coat.
"The exact place of the meeting is not material," he said frowningly.
But Hite's mercurial interest in the drawing had revived anew.
"Thar she be," he exclaimed, so suddenly that the jury started with a
common impulse, "the ole witch-face,"--he pointed at the sketch in the
coroner's hand,--"a mite ter the east an' a leetle south in the
pictur', ez nat'ral ez life!"
One of the jurymen asked to see the sketch again. Evidently, in the
hasty delineation of the contours of the slope they had not noticed
the gigantic grimacing countenance which they all knew so well; the
picturesque figure of the mountaineer in the foreground had so
impressed the stranger that it was much more nearly complete than the
landscape, being definite in every detail, and fully shaded. The book
was handed along the row of men, each recognizing the semblance, once
pointed out, with a touch of dismayed surprise that alarmed the
coroner for the sanity of the verdict; his rational estimate rated
spells and bewitchments and omens as far less plausible agencies in
disaster than horse-thieves, highwaymen, and moonshiners.
"Look at the face of the deceased," he said, with a sort of spare
enunciation, coercive somehow in its inexpressiveness. "Ye are sure ye
never viewed that man afore yestiddy?"
"I hev said so an' swore it," said Hite, a trifle nettled.
"Ye rode in comp'ny a hour or mo' an' never asked his name?"
"I never axed him no questions, nor he me," replied Hite, "'ceptin'
'bout'n the witch-face. He was powerful streck by that. An' I tole him
't war a onlucky day."
The jury, a dreary row of unkempt heads, and bearded anxious faces,
and crouching shoulders askew, cleared their throats, and two
uncrossed and recrossed their legs, the plank seat creaking ominously
with the motion under their combined weight. A shade of disappointment
was settling on the coroner's face. This was slight information indeed
from the only person who had seen the man alive. There was silence for
a moment. The splashing of the rain on the roof became drearily
audible in the interval. The stir of the group in the space outside
was asserted anew, with their low-toned fitful converse; a
black-and-white ox in the weed-grown garden emitted a deep, depressed
low of remonstrance against the rain, and the irking of the yoke, and
the herbage just beyond his reach. The jurymen might see him through
the logs, and now and again one of them mechanically ducked his head
to look out upon the dismal aspect of the chimney and orchard, round
which so many horses and wagons had not gathered since the daughter of
the house was long ago married here. There was a sprinkle of gray in
his hair, and he remembered the jollities of the wedding,--incongruous
recollection,--and once more he looked at the stark figure, its face
covered with a white cloth, which had been done in a sentiment of
atonement for the unseemly publicity of its fate.
In sparsely settled communities, death, being rare, retains much of
the terror which custom lessens in the dense crowds of cities. There
death is met at every corner. It goes on 'Change. It sits upon the
bench. It is chronicled in the columns of every newspaper. Daily its
bells toll. Its melancholy pageantry traverses the streets of wealthy
quarters, and it stalks abroad hourly in the slums, and few there are
who gaze after it. But here it comes so seldom that its dread features
are not made smug by familiarity. When Hite was told to look again at
the face and see if memory might not have played him false, to make
sure he had never seen the man before yesterday, he hesitated, and
advanced with such reluctance, and started back, dropping the cloth,
with such swift repulsion, that the coroner, habituated to such
matters, gazed at him with a doubtful scrutiny.
"Oh, he looked nowise like that," he exclaimed in a raised, nervous
voice that caught the attention of the crowd outside, and resulted in
a sudden cessation of stir and colloquy, "though it's him, sure
enough! And," with a burst of regret, "he war a mighty pleasant man!"
The coroner, intentionally taking him at a disadvantage, asked
abruptly, "What do you work at mostly?"
Hite turned shortly from the bier. "I farms some," he hesitated; "dad
bein' mos'ly out o' the field, nowadays, agin' so constant."
"What do you work at mostly?" reiterated the official.
Hite divined his suspicion. Some flying rumor had doubtless come to
his ears, how credible, how unimpugnable, the moonshiner could not
tell. Nevertheless, his loyalty to that secret vocation of his had
become a part of his nature, so continuous were its demands upon his
courage, his strategy, his foresight, his industry. It was tantamount
to his instinct of self-defense. He held his head down, with his
excited dark eyes looking up from under his brows at the coroner. But
he would not speak. He would admit naught of what was evidently known.
"Warn't ye afeard he might be a revenuer?" suggested the officer.
"I never war afeard, so ter say, o' one man at a time," Hite ventured.
"Didn't ye think he might take a notion that you were a moonshiner?"
"He never showed no suspicion o' me, noways," replied Hite warily. "We
rid tergether free an' favored. He 'peared a powerful book-l'arned
man,--like no revenuer ever I see."
"Where did you part company?"
Hite sought to identify the spot by description; and then he was
allowed to pass out, his spirits flagging with the ordeal, and with
the knowledge that his connection with the manufacture of brush
whiskey was suspected by the coroner's jury, suggesting an adequate
motive on his part for waylaying a stranger supposed to be of the
revenue force. He felt the dash of the rain in his face as he stood
aside to make way for the "valley man with the lung complaint," who
was passing into the restricted apartment; and despite his whirl of
anxiety and excitement and regret and resentment, he noted with a
touch of surprise the cool unconcern of the man's face and manner,
albeit duly grave and adjusted to the decorums of the melancholy
occasion.
He was sworn, and gave his name as Alan Selwyn. The jury listened with
interest to his fluent account of his occupation in the valley, which
had been mercantile, of his temporary residence here for a bronchial
affection; and when he was asked to identify the man who had so
mysteriously come to his death, they marked his quick, easy stride as
he crossed the room, with his hat in his hand, and his unmoved
countenance as he looked fixedly down into the face of the dead. He
remained a longer interval than was usual with the witnesses, as if to
make sure. Then, still quite businesslike and brisk, he stated that he
could not identify him, having certainly never seen him before.
"The only papers which he had on him," said the coroner, watching the
effect of his words, "were two letters addressed to you."
The young man started in palpable surprise. As he looked at the
exterior of the letters, which were stamped and postmarked, he
observed that they must have been taken out of the post-office
at Sandford Cross-Roads, to expedite their delivery; the
postmaster doubtless consenting to this request on the part
of so reputable-looking a person or a possible acquaintance.
"Were you expecting a visitor?" asked the coroner.
"Not at all," responded the puzzled witness.
He was requested to open the letters, read and show them. But he
waived this courtesy, asking the coroner to open and read them to the
jury. They were of no moment, both on matters of casual business, and
Mr. Alan Selwyn was dismissed; the coroner blandly regretting that, in
view of his malady, he had been required to come out in so chilly a
rain.
Notwithstanding his composure he was in some haste to be gone. He went
quickly through the crowd, drawing down his hat over his brow, and
deftly buttoning his overcoat across his chest and throat. He had
reached his horse, and had placed one foot in the stirrup, when,
chancing to glance back over his shoulder, he saw Narcissa Hanway's
white, flowerlike face, her bonnet pushed far back on her tawny yellow
hair, both arms outstretched in a gesture of negation and repulsion
toward the apartment where the jury sat, while a dark-haired, slow man
urged her forward, one hand on her shoulder, and the old mountain
woman followed with insistence and encouragement. He hesitated for a
moment; then putting spurs to his horse, he rode off swiftly through
the slanting lines of rain.