yes flew very wide open; his heart experienced a sudden throbless
moment; his mind leaped backward to the unexplained smoke mystery of the
day before. It was on the end of his tongue to cry out to his unseen
patron, to urge him to leave the Witch to her deviltry and come along
home, when the old woman herself appeared in the doorway--alone.

She sat down upon the doorstep, pulling away at a long pipe, her hooded
face almost invisible from the distance which he resolutely held. He
felt that she was eyeing him with grim interest. For a few minutes he
waited, a sickening doubt growing up in his soul. A single glance showed
him that the chimney was no longer emitting smoke. It seemed to him that
the old woman was losing all semblance of life. She was no more than a
black, inanimate heap of rags piled against the door-jamb.

Hobbs let out a shout. The horses plunged viciously. Slowly the bundle
of rags took shape. The old woman arose and hobbled toward him, leaning
upon a great cane.

"Whe--where's Mr. King?" called out Hobbs.

She stopped above him and he could see her face. Mr. Hobbs was chilled
to the bone. Her arm was raised, a bony finger pointing to the treetops
above her hovel.

"He's gone. Didn't you see him? He went off among the treetops. You
won't see him again." She waited a moment, and then went on, in most
ingratiating tones: "Would you care to come into my house? I can show
you the road he took. You--"

But Mr. Hobbs, his hair on end, had dropped the rein of King's horse and
was putting boot to his own beast, whirling frantically into the path
that led away from the hated, damned spot! Down the road he crashed,
pursued by witches whose persistence put to shame the efforts of those
famed ladies of Tam O'Shanter in the long ago; if he had looked over his
shoulder, he might have discovered that he was followed by a riderless
horse, nothing more.

But a riderless horse is a gruesome thing--sometimes.

CHAPTER IX

STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES

The further adventures of Mr. Hobbs on this memorable afternoon are
quickly chronicled, notwithstanding the fact that he lived an age while
they were transpiring, and experienced sensations that would still be
fresh in his memory if he lived to be a hundred.

He was scarcely well out of sight of the cabin when his conscience began
to smite him: after all, his patron might be in dire need of his
services, and here he was, fleeing from an old woman and a whiff of