ar 'bout two year' ago--thar war a valley-man up hyar
a-huntin' in the mountings with some other fellers, an' toward sunset he
war a-waitin' at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek,
hopin' ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon
luck war ag'in' him, fer he got nuthin' but durned tired. So, ez he
waited, he grounded his rifle, an' leaned himself ag'in' a great big
tree ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his
head, an', folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek,
he looked into a skellington's eye-sockets. Thar war a skellington's
grisly face peerin' at him through a crack in the bark."

The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent in
expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had
bepainted the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous
strokes of red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal
air was dank, with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on
the western side, and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above
the massive, purple mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity
of tint, a suave, saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid
vermilion that lured the eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively
at it as he resumed:

"Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez
skellingtons. He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till
he reached Colbury, an' thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk a
hand in the game. Skellingtons, he said, didn't grow on trees
spontaneous, an' he hed an official interes' in human relics out o'
place. So he kem,--the tree is 'twixt hyar an' my house thar on the
rise,--an', folks! the tale war plain. Some man chased off'n the face of
the yearth, hid out from the law,--that's the way Meddy takes it,--he
hed clomb the tree, an' it bein' holler, he drapped down inside it,
thinkin' o' course he could git out the way he went in. But, no! It
mought hev been deeper 'n he calculated, or mo' narrow, but he couldn't
make the rise. He died still strugglin', fer his long, bony fingers war
gripped in the wood--it's rotted a deal sence then."

"Who was the man?" asked Seymour.

"Nobody knows,--nobody keers 'cept' Meddy. She hev wep' a bushel o'
tears about him. The cor'ner 'lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock
rifle he bed with him that it mus' hev happened nigh a hunderd years
ago. Meddy