d
now quite vanished out of the substance of the velvet. Next came a pair of
scarlet breeches, once worn by the French governor of Louisbourg, and the
knees of which had touched the lower step of the throne of Louis le Grand.
The Frenchman had given these small-clothes to an Indian powwow, who
parted with them to the old witch for a gill of strong waters, at one of
their dances in the forest. Furthermore, Mother Rigby produced a pair of
silk stockings, and put them on the figure's legs, where they showed as
unsubstantial as a dream, with the wooden reality of the two sticks making
itself miserably apparent through the holes. Lastly, she put her dead
husband's wig on the bare scalp of the pumpkin, and surmounted the whole
with a dusty three-cornered hat, in which was stuck the longest tail
feather of a rooster.

Then the old dame stood the figure up in a corner of her cottage, and
chuckled to behold its yellow semblance of a visage, with its nobby little
nose thrust into the air. It had a strangely self-satisfied aspect, and
seemed to say, "Come look at me!"

"And you are well worth looking at--that's a fact!" quoth Mother Rigby, in
admiration at her own handiwork: "I've made many a puppet, since I've been
a witch; but methinks this is the finest of them all. 'Tis almost too good
for a scarecrow. And, by the by, I'll just fill a fresh pipe of tobacco,
and then take him out to the corn-patch."

While filling her pipe, the old woman continued to gaze with almost
motherly affection at the figure in the corner. To say the truth, whether
it were chance, or skill, or downright witchcraft, there was something
wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape, bedizened with its tattered
finery; and as for the countenance, it appeared to shrivel its yellow
surface into a grin--a funny kind of expression, betwixt scorn and
merriment, as if it understood itself to be a jest at mankind. The more
Mother Rigby looked, the better she was pleased.

"Dickon," cried she sharply, "another coal for my pipe!"

Hardly had she spoken than, just as before, there was a red-glowing coal
on the top of the tobacco. She drew in a long whiff, and puffed it forth
again into the bar of morning sunshine, which struggled through the one
dusty pane of her cottage window. Mother Rigby always liked to flavor her
pipe with a coal of fire from the particular chimney corner whence this
had been brought. But where that chimney corner might be, or who brought
the