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 æsthetic 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 cicadæ, 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