The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain, and Other Stories. Mary Noailles Murfree

face of the stranger, she only caught a glimpse of it, as if by accident, and turned away, pulling her white bonnet down over her face, and declaring that she would not. "I hev viewed him wunst, an' I won't look at him again," she protested, with a burst of sobs.

      "Now set down in this cheer, daughter, an' tell us what ye know about it all—easy an' quiet," said the coroner in a soothing, paternal strain.

      "Oh, nuthin', nuthin'!" exclaimed the girl, throwing herself into the chair in the attitude of an abandonment of grief.

      "Air ye cryin' 'kase ye war 'quainted with him ennywise?" demanded one of the jurymen, with a quickening interest. He was a neighbor; that is, counting as propinquity a distance of ten miles.

      The girl lifted her head suddenly. "I never seen him till yestiddy," she protested steadily. "I be a heap apter ter weep 'kase my 'quaintances ain't dead!" She gave him a composed, sarcastic smile, then fell to laughing and crying together.

      To the others the discomfiture of their confrère was the first touch of comedy relief in the tragic situation. They cast at one another a glance of appreciation trenching on a smile, and the abashed questioner drew out a plug of tobacco, and with a manner of preoccupation gnawed a bit from it; then replaced it in his pocket, with a physical contortion which caused the plank on which the jury were seated to creak ominously, to the manifest anxiety of the worthies ranged thereon.

      "How did you happen to see the man?" he asked, as if he had perceived no significance in her previous answer.

      "'Kase I didn't happen ter be blind," her half-muffled voice replied. Her arm was thrown over the back of the chair, and her face was hidden on her elbow.

      The coroner interposed quickly: "Where were you goin', an' what did you see?"

      She sobbed aloud for a moment. Then ensued an interval of silence. Suddenly the interest of the subject seemed to lay hold upon her, and she began to speak very rapidly, lifting her white tear-stained face, and pushing her bonnet back on her rough curling auburn hair:—

      "I war a-blackberryin', thar bein' only a few lef' yit, an' I went fur an' furder yit from home; an' ez I kem out'n the woods over yon," half rising, and pointing with a free gesture, "I viewed—or yit I 'lowed I viewed—the witch-face through a bunch o' honey locust, the leaves bein' drapped a'ready, they bein' always the fust o' the year ter git bare. An' stiddier leavin' it be, I sot my bucket o' berries at the foot o' a tree', an started down the slope todes the bluff, ter make sure an' view it clar o' the trees." The girl paused, her eyes widening, her voice faltering, her breath coming fast. "An' goin' swift, some hawgs, stray, half grown, 'bout twenty shoats feedin' in the woods—my rustlin' in the bushes skeered 'em I reckon—they sot out to run, possessed by the devil, like them the Scriptur' tells about." She paused again, panting, her hand to her heart.

      The disaffected juryman turned to one side, recrossing his legs, and spitting disparagingly on the ground. "She can't swear them hawgs war possessed by the devil," he said in a low tone to his next neighbor.

      "Oh, why not," exclaimed the girl, "when we know so many men air possessed by the devil—why not them shoats, bein' jes' without clothes, an' without the gift o' speech to mark the diff'unce!"

      She paused again, and the coroner, standing a trifle back of her chair, shook his head at the obstructive juryman, and asked her in a commonplace voice what the hogs had to do with it.

      "That's what I wanter know!" she cried, half turning in her chair to look up at him. "I started 'em, an' I be at the bottom o' it all, ef it's like I think—me, yearnin' ter look at the old witch-face! The hawgs run through the woods like fire on dry grass, an' I be 'feared they skeered the stranger man's horse—he had none whenst I seen him, though. I hearn loud talkin', or hollerin', a cornsiderable piece off, an' then gallopin' hoofs"—

      "More horses than one, do you think?" demanded the coroner.

      "Oh, how kin I swear to that? I seen none. Fur when I got thar, this man war lyin' in the herder's trail, bruised and bloody—oh, like ye see—an' his eyes opened; an' he gin a sort o' gasp whenst I tuk his han'—an' he war dead. An' I skeered the hawgs, an' they skeered his horse, an' he killed him; an' I be 'sponsible fur it all, an' I wisht ye'd hang me fur it quick, an' be done with it!"

      She burst into sobs once more, and hid her face on her arm on the back of the chair. Then, suddenly lifting her head, she resumed: "I jes' called and called Ben, an' bein' he hain't never fur off, he hearn me, an' kem. An' then he rid fur the neighbors, an' kem down the valley arter you-uns," with a side glance at the coroner. "An' he lef' me a shootin'-iron, in case of a fox, or a wolf, or suthin' kem along. 'Bout sunset the neighbors kem. An' till then I sot thar keepin' watch, an' a-viewin' the witch-face 'crost the Cove, plumb till the sun went down."

      She bowed her head again on her arm, and a momentary silence ensued. Then the coroner, clearing his throat, said reassuringly, "Thar ain't nuthin' in the witch-face, nohow. It's jes' a notion. Man and boy, I have knowed that hillside fur forty year, an' I never could see no witch-face; it's been p'inted out ter me a thousand times."

      She looked at him in dumb amazement for a moment; then broke out, "Waal, what would ye think ef ye hed seen, like me, the witch-face shining in the darkest night, nigh on ter midnight, like the ole 'oman had lighted her a candle somewhars—jes' shinin', an' grinnin', an' mockin', plain ez daybreak? That's what I hev viewed—an' I 'low ter view it agin—oh, I do, I do!"

      He looked at her hard, but he did not say what he thought, and the faces of the jurymen, which had implied a strong exception to his declaration of skepticism touching the existence of the ominous facial outline on the hillside, underwent a sudden change of expression. She was hardly responsible, they considered, and her last incredible assertion had gone far to nullify the effect of her previous testimony. She was overcome by the nervous shock, or had told less than she knew and was still concealing somewhat, or was so credulous and plastic and fanciful as to be hardly worthy of belief. She was dismissed earlier than she had dared to hope: and with this deterioration of the testimony of the witness who was nearest the time and place of the disaster, the jury presently went to work to evolve out of so slender a thread of fact and so knotty a tangle of possibility their verdict.