ir
devious turnings they had retraced several miles of their course, and
were now much nearer Selwyn's dwelling in the woods than the terminus
of their route.

Despite their uncertainty and anxiety, the rest was grateful. The
shades of night were cool and refreshing after the glare of the day,
as they sat smoking on the rocks about the verge of the mountain. The
horses had been unsaddled, and were picketed in an open glade at a
little distance: in recurrent pauses in the talk, the sound of their
grazing on the scanty grass came to the ear; all else was silence save
the tinkling of a mountain rill,--a keen detached appoggiatura rising
occasionally above the monody of its murmurous flow,--and the
melancholy chiming of some lingering cicada, the latest spared of the
frost.

The night was as yet very dark; the stars were dull in a haze, the
valley was a vague blur; even the faces of the men could not be dimly
distinguished. Strange, then, that an added visibility suddenly
invested the woods and the sky-line beyond a dense belt of timber.

"'Pears ter me toler'ble early fur the moon," observed one of the men.
"She's on the wane now, too."

"'Tain't early, though," replied the sullen bass voice of Silas Boyd
from the darkness; it was lowered, that the others might not hear.
"That thar old perverted Philistine of a Persimmon Sneed kep' us
danderin' roun' hyar till mighty nigh eight o'clock, I'll bet,
a-persistin' an' a-persistin' he knowed the road, when he war plumb
lost time we got on that cowpath. An' the jury o' view, they hed ter
take Persimmon Sneed's advice, he bein' the oldest, an' wait _hyar_
fur the risin' moon. Persimmon Sneed will repent he picked out this
spot,--he'll repent it sure!"

This dictum was only the redundancy of discontent; but when, in the
light of subsequent events, it was remembered, and special gifts of
discernment were attributed to Silas Boyd, he did not disclaim them,
for he felt that his words were surely inspired by some presentiment,
so apt were they, and so swiftly did the fulfillment follow the
prophecy.

There was a sudden stir among the group. The men were getting quickly
to their feet, alert, tense, with broken whispers and bated breath.
For there, on a bare slope, viewed diagonally across the gorge and
illumined with a wavering pallor, the witch-face glared down at them
from the dense darkness of the woods. The quick chilly repulsion of
the strangers as they gazed spellbound at