he figures of the seven, successively
stooping at the foot of the bier to sign each his name to the
inquisition at last drawn up.

One by one they came slowly out, looking quite exhausted from their
long restraint, the unwonted mental exercitations, and the nervous
strain. Then it was developed, to the astonishment and disappointment
of the little crowd, tingling with excitement and anxiety, that this
document simply set forth the fact that at an inquisition holden on
Witch-Face Mountain, Kildeer County, before Jeremiah Flaxman, coroner,
upon the body of an unknown man, there lying dead, the jurors whose
names were subscribed thereto, upon their oaths, did say that he came
to his death from concussion of the brain consequent upon being thrown
or dragged from his horse by means or by persons to the jury unknown.

There was a palpable dismay on Constant Hite's expressive face. He had
hoped that the verdict might be death by accident. Others had expected
the implication of horse-thieves, of whose existence the jury being of
the neighborhood were well advised, and the disappearance of the man's
horse might well suggest this explanation. The coroner would return
this inquisition to the criminal court together with a list of the
material witnesses. Thus the matter was left as undecided as before
the inquest, the jeopardy, the terrors of circumstantial evidence, all
still impending, dark with doom, like the black cloud which visibly
overshadowed the landscape.

IV.

Since the knight-errantry of wolf and bear and catamount and fox has
scant need of milestones, or signposts, or ferries, or the tender
iteration of road-taxes, the casual glance might hardly perceive the
necessity of opening a thoroughfare through this wilderness, for these
freebooters seemed likely to be its chief beneficiaries. A more rugged
district could not be found in all that massive upheaval of rocks and
tangled wooded fastnesses stretching from the northeast to the
southwest some twenty miles, and known as Witch-Face Mountain; a more
scantily populated region than its slopes and adjacent coves scarcely
exists in the length and breadth of the State of Tennessee. The
physical possibilities were arrayed against the project, so steep was
the comblike summit on either side, so heavy and tortuous the
outcropping rock that served as the bony structure of the great
mountain mass. True, the river pierced it, the denudation of solid
sandstone cliffs, a thousa