the thought he
experienced a certain animosity toward the man that he should not have
known enough to take better care of himself. Why must he needs die
here, in this horrible unexplained way, and leave other men, chance
associates, to risk stretching hemp for murder? He felt his strong
life beating in his throat almost to suffocation at the mere
suggestion. Again the lie tempted him, to be again withstood; and as
he strode into the room upon the calling of his name, he saw how
futile, how flimsy, was every device, for, fluttering in the coroner's
hand, he recognized the sketch of the "Witch-Face" which the dead man
had made, and the masterly drawing of his own imposing figure in the
foreground. He had forgotten it utterly for the time being. In the
surprise and confusion that had beset him, it had not occurred to him
to speculate how he had chanced to be subpoenaed, how the idea could
have occurred to the coroner that he knew aught of the stranger. As he
stood against the batten door, the pale light from the interstices of
the unchinked logs, all the grayer because it alternated with the
sombre timbers, falling upon his face and figure, his hat upturned in
front, revealing his brow with a forelock of straight black hair, his
brilliant dark eyes, and his distinctly cut definite features, the
sketch-book was swiftly passed from one to another of the jury,
reluctantly relinquished here and there, and more than once eliciting
half-smothered exclamations of delighted wonder from the
unsophisticated mountaineers, as they glanced back and forth from the
man leaning against the door to the counterfeit presentment on the
paper.

Constant Hite experienced a glow of vicarious pride as he remembered
the satisfaction that the artist had taken in the sketch, and he
wished that that still thing on the bier could know how his work, most
wonderful it seemed, was appreciated. And then, with a swift revulsion
of feeling, he realized that it was this which had entrapped him; this
bit of paper had brought him into fear and trouble and risk of his
life. The man might be of the revenue force. He might have encountered
other moonshiners, and thus have come to his violent death. If this
were his vocation, it brought Hite into dark suspicion by virtue of
the fact, known to a few of the neighborhood, that he himself was a
distiller of brush whiskey. No one else had seen the stranger till the
finding of the body. He gathered this from the trend