Rigby looked the better she was pleased.

"Dickon," cried she sharply, "another coal for my pipe!"

Hardly had she spoken, than, just as before, there was a red-glowing
coal on the top of the tobacco. She drew in a long whiff and puffed it
forth again into the bar of morning sunshine which struggled through
the one dusty pane of her cottage window. Mother Rigby always liked to
flavor her pipe with a coal of fire from the particular chimney corner
whence this had been brought. But where that chimney corner might be,
or who brought the coal from it,--further than that the invisible
messenger seemed to respond to the name of Dickon,--I cannot tell.

"That puppet yonder," thought Mother Rigby, still with her eyes fixed
on the scarecrow, "is too good a piece of work to stand all summer in a
corn-patch, frightening away the crows and blackbirds. He's capable of
better things. Why, I've danced with a worse one, when partners
happened to be scarce, at our witch meetings in the forest! What if I
should let him take his chance among the other men of straw and empty
fellows who go bustling about the world?"

The old witch took three or four more whiffs of her pipe and smiled.

"He'll meet plenty of his brethren at every street corner!" continued
she. "Well; I didn't mean to dabble in witchcraft to-day, further than
the lighting of my pipe, but a witch I am, and a witch I'm likely to
be, and there's no use trying to shirk it. I'll make a man of my
scarecrow, were it only for the joke's sake!"

While muttering these words, Mother Rigby took the pipe from her own
mouth and thrust it into the crevice which represented the same feature
in the pumpkin visage of the scarecrow.

"Puff, darling, puff!" said she. "Puff away, my fine fellow! your life
depends on it!"

This was a strange exhortation, undoubtedly, to be addressed to a mere
thing of sticks, straw, and old clothes, with nothing better than a
shrivelled pumpkin for a head,--as we know to have been the scarecrow's
case. Nevertheless, as we must carefully hold in remembrance, Mother
Rigby was a witch of singular power and dexterity; and, keeping this
fact duly before our minds, we shall see nothing beyond credibility in
the remarkable incidents of our story. Indeed, the great difficulty
will be at once got over, if we can only bring ourselves to believe
that, as soon as the old dame bade him puff, there came a whiff of
smoke from the scarecrow's mouth. It was the very feebl