liberty were in the balance, the
primitive denizens of Witch-Face Mountain felt that the admission of
Narcissa Hanway's testimony to consideration and credibility evinced
an essential defect in the law of the land, and the fallibility of all
human reasoning. What distorted impression might not so appalling an
event make upon one so young, so feminine, so inexperienced! What
exaggerated wild thing might she not say, unintentionally inculpating
half Witch-Face Mountain in robbery and murder!

Constant Hite, as he bluffly entered the passageway, his head up, his
eyes wide and bright, his vigorous step elastic and light, gave no
token of the spiritual war he had waged as he came. Already he felt in
great jeopardy. On account of his illicit vocation he could ill abide
the scrutiny of the law. With scant proof, he argued, a moonshiner
might be suspected of highway robbery and murder. As he had journeyed
hither with the constable and his fellows, who conserved the air of
disinterested spectators, but who he knew had been summoned to aid the
officer in case he should evade or delay, when he would have been
forthwith arrested, he had been sorely tempted to deny having ever
seen the stranger, in whose company he had spent an hour or so of the
previous day. He had been able to put the lie from him with a normal
moral impulse. He did not appreciate the turpitude of perjury. He
esteemed it only a natural lie invested with pomp and circumstance;
and the New Testament on which he should be sworn meant no more to his
unlettered conscience than the horn-book, since he knew as little of
its contents. But a lie is a skulking thing, and he had scant affinity
with it.

He thought, with a sort of numb wonderment, that it was strange he
should feel no more compassion for the object stretched out here,
dumb, dead, bruised, and bloody, which so short a space since he had
seen full of life and interest, animated by a genial courtesy and
graced with learning and subtle insight; now so unknowing, so
unlettered, so blind! Whither went this ethereal investiture of
life?--for it was not mere being; one might exist hardily enough
without it. Did the darkness close over it, too, or was it not the
germ of the soul, the budding of that wider knowledge and finer
aspiration to flower hereafter in rarer air? He did not know; he only
vaguely cared, and he reproached himself dully that he cared no more.
For he--his life was threatened! With the renewal of