an of Uncle Reuben's wealth to take my part, and see me through. So
I rattled the ramrod down my gun, just to know if the charge were right,
after so much walking; and finding it full six inches deep, as I like to
have it, went boldly down the steep gorge of rock, with a firm resolve
to shoot any witch unless it were good Mother Melldrum. Nevertheless to
my surprise, all was quiet, and fair to look at, in the decline of
the narrow way, with great stalked ferns coming forth like trees, yet
hanging like cobwebs over one. And along one side, a little spring was
getting rid of its waters. Any man might stop and think; or he might
go on and think; and in either case, there was none to say that he was
making a fool of himself.

When I came to the foot of this ravine, and over against the great black
slough, there was no sign of Master Huckaback, nor of any other living
man, except myself, in the silence. Therefore, I sat in a niche of rock,
gazing at the slough, and pondering the old tradition about it.

They say that, in the ancient times, a mighty necromancer lived in the
wilderness of Exmoor. Here, by spell and incantation, he built himself
a strong high palace, eight-sided like a spider's web, and standing on
a central steep; so that neither man nor beast could cross the moors
without his knowledge. If he wished to rob and slay a traveller, or to
have wild ox, or stag for food, he had nothing more to do than sit at
one of his eight windows, and point his unholy book at him. Any moving
creature, at which that book was pointed, must obey the call, and come
from whatever distance, if sighted once by the wizard.

This was a bad condition of things, and all the country groaned under
it; and Exmoor (although the most honest place that a man could wish
to live in) was beginning to get a bad reputation, and all through that
vile wizard. No man durst even go to steal a sheep, or a pony, or so
much as a deer for dinner, lest he should be brought to book by a far
bigger rogue than he was. And this went on for many years; though they
prayed to God to abate it. But at last, when the wizard was getting fat
and haughty upon his high stomach, a mighty deliverance came to Exmoor,
and a warning, and a memory. For one day the sorcerer gazed from his
window facing the southeast of the compass, and he yawned, having killed
so many men that now he was weary of it.

'Ifackins,' he cried, or some such oath, both profane and uncomely,
'I see a