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 aesthetic 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 cicadae, so loud
in the latter days of August, were dulled to long intervals of
silence; in the distanc