its inexpressiveness. "Ye are sure ye
never viewed that man afore yestiddy?"

"I hev said so an' swore it," said Hite, a trifle nettled.

"Ye rode in comp'ny a hour or mo' an' never asked his name?"

"I never axed him no questions, nor he me," replied Hite, "'ceptin'
'bout'n the witch-face. He was powerful streck by that. An' I tole him
't war a onlucky day."

The jury, a dreary row of unkempt heads, and bearded anxious faces,
and crouching shoulders askew, cleared their throats, and two
uncrossed and recrossed their legs, the plank seat creaking ominously
with the motion under their combined weight. A shade of disappointment
was settling on the coroner's face. This was slight information indeed
from the only person who had seen the man alive. There was silence for
a moment. The splashing of the rain on the roof became drearily
audible in the interval. The stir of the group in the space outside
was asserted anew, with their low-toned fitful converse; a
black-and-white ox in the weed-grown garden emitted a deep, depressed
low of remonstrance against the rain, and the irking of the yoke, and
the herbage just beyond his reach. The jurymen might see him through
the logs, and now and again one of them mechanically ducked his head
to look out upon the dismal aspect of the chimney and orchard, round
which so many horses and wagons had not gathered since the daughter of
the house was long ago married here. There was a sprinkle of gray in
his hair, and he remembered the jollities of the wedding,--incongruous
recollection,--and once more he looked at the stark figure, its face
covered with a white cloth, which had been done in a sentiment of
atonement for the unseemly publicity of its fate.

In sparsely settled communities, death, being rare, retains much of
the terror which custom lessens in the dense crowds of cities. There
death is met at every corner. It goes on 'Change. It sits upon the
bench. It is chronicled in the columns of every newspaper. Daily its
bells toll. Its melancholy pageantry traverses the streets of wealthy
quarters, and it stalks abroad hourly in the slums, and few there are
who gaze after it. But here it comes so seldom that its dread features
are not made smug by familiarity. When Hite was told to look again at
the face and see if memory might not have played him false, to make
sure he had never seen the man before yesterday, he hesitated, and
advanced with such reluctance, and started back, dropping