the apparition was
outmatched by the horror of those who had known the fantasy from
childhood;--never thus had they beheld the gaunt old face! What
strange unhallowed mystery was this, that it should smile and grimace
and mock at them from out the shadowy night, with flickers of light as
of laughter running athwart its grisly lineaments? What evil might it
portend? They all stood aghast, watching this pallid emblazonment of
the deep night.

"Boys," said old Dent Kirby tremulously, "thar's suthin' powerful
cur'ous 'bout this 'speriunce. That thar light war never kindled in
heaven or yearth."

"Let's go!" cried Jeremiah Sayres. "We hev got ter git out'n this
somehows."

"Go whar?" croaked Silas Boyd, his deep bass voice lowered to a
whisper. "I be 'feard ter quit the trail furder. 'Pinnock's Mis'ry' be
hyar-abouts somewhar, a plumb quicksand, what a man got into an'
floundered an' sank, an' floundered agin, an' whenst they fund him his
hair war white an' his mind deranged. Or else we-uns mought run off'n
a bluff somewhar, an' git our necks bruk."

Now Persimmon Sneed was possessed of a most intrusive curiosity, and
he was further endowed with a sturdy courage.

"I'll jes' step off a leetle way to'des that light, an' view whar it
kems from," he observed coolly. "The woods air too wet to burn."

He would not listen to protest.

"The witch-face ain't never blighted me none," he rejoined stoutly as
he set forth.

IX.

The thick tangled mass of the undergrowth presently intervened, so
that, as he broke his way through it, he wondered that its bosky
dimness should be so visible beneath the heavy shadows of the great
trees looming high overhead. Once he stopped dubiously; the glow
evidently came rather from below than above. It is too much to say
that a thrill of fear tried the fibres of Persimmon Sneed's obdurate
old heart. But he listened for a moment to hear, perchance, the sound
of voices from the group he had left, or the champing of the picketed
steeds. He was an active man, and had come fast and far since quitting
his companions. Not even a vague murmur rose from the silent autumnal
woods. The stillness was absolute. As he moved forward once more, the
impact of his foot upon the rain-soaked leaves, the rustle of the
boughs as he pressed among them, the rise and fall of his own
breathing, somewhat quicker than its wont, served to render
appreciable to Persimmon Sneed the fact that he possessed nerves which