e 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