Charles Egbert Craddock

“ Theodosia stood like one bewitched; a light like the illumination of jewels was in her sapphire eyes; the color surged to her cheek; she lifted up her head on its round, white throat; her lips curved. "Oh, poor fool!" she thought in pity for herself, for this was what the Colbury people had been saying all day in their swift, recurrent glances, their half-masked asides, their furtive turning to look after her. And she—to have given herself a day of such keen misery unconscious of their covert encomiums!
"I live up thar in the wilderness till I jes' don't sense nothin'," she said. ”

“ Hanway had never before seen a man wear a red coat, or such foot-gear as the slipshod embroidered velvet slippers in which he shuffled to a chair and sat down, tilted back, with his hands in the pockets of his gray trousers. To be sure, he could but be grave when testifying before a coroner's jury, but Hanway was hardly prepared for such exuberant cheerfulness as his manner, his attire, and his face seemed to indicate. ”

“ Even the ground, when the repetitious woods held no new revelation of tree or flower, or hazy, flickering insect dandering through the yellow sunshine and the olive-tinted shadow and the vivid green foliage, the very ground had a word for him.
"This formation here," he said, leaning from his saddle to watch the path slipping along beneath his horse's hoofs, like the unwinding of coils of brown ribbon, "is like that witch-face slope that we saw awhile ago. It seems to occur at long intervals in patches. You see down that declivity how little grows, how barren." ”

“ Death is death, there."
"Death is death anywhar," said the mountaineer gloomily.
"No. Get you a mile or two of iron fence, and stone gates, and lots of sculptured marble angels around, and death is peace, or rest, or heaven, or paradise, according to your creed and the taste of the subject; but here you are done for and dead."
Hanway, in the limited experience of the mountaineer, could not follow the theory, and he forbore to press it further.
"Well," Selwyn resumed, "they took him home, and I was glad to see him go. ”

“ And in less than ten minutes a goodly number of recruits from the crowd assembled in Colbury were also "a-kitin'" out on the road to Old Bear, delighted with a new excitement, and bent on running down the eloping couple with no more appreciation of the sentimental phase of the question and the tender illusions of love's young dream than if Jacob and Cynthia were two mountain foxes.
Down the red-clay slopes of the outskirts of the town "John Barleycorn" thunders with a train of horsemen at his heels. ”

“ The fire-light slanted through the woods in quick, elusive fluctuations, ever dimmer, ever recurrently flaring, and when the jury of view and their companions, alarmed by the long absence of Persimmon Sneed, followed the strange light through the woods to the brink of the burning spring, they found naught astir save the vagrant shadows of the great boles of the trees, no longer held to their accustomed orbit, but wandering through the woods with a large freedom. ”

“ Why must he needs die here, in this horrible unexplained way, and leave other men, chance associates, to risk stretching hemp for murder? He felt his strong life beating in his throat almost to suffocation at the mere suggestion. Again the lie tempted him, to be again withstood; and as he strode into the room upon the calling of his name, he saw how futile, how flimsy, was every device, for, fluttering in the coroner's hand, he recognized the sketch of the "Witch-Face" which the dead man had made, and the masterly drawing of his own imposing figure in the foreground. ”

“ Hite exclaimed, "fur all the Cove's a shadder, an' fur all the wind's a breath."
For clouds had thickened over the sky, and much of the world was gray beneath, and the scene had dulled in tint and spirit since last they had had some large outlook upon it. Only on the slopes toward the east did the sunshine rest, and in the midst of a sterile, barren slant it flickered on that semblance of ill omen.
"An onlucky day, stranger," Hite said slowly.
The man of science had drawn in his restive horse, and had turned with a keen, freshened interest toward the witch-face. ”

“ He was not a dweller in the immediate vicinity, but hailed from the Cove,—a man of substance and a large cattle-owner, pasturing his herds, duly branded, on a tract of unfenced wilderness, his mountain lands, where they roamed in the safe solitudes of those deep seclusions during the summer, and were rounded up, well fattened, and driven home at the approach of winter. He was the typical man of convictions, one who entertains a serious belief that he possesses a governing conscience instead of an abiding delight in his own way. ”

“ To the great majority of men, the presence of women in affairs of business is an intrusive evil of times out of joint. Now, since matters of life and liberty were in the balance, the primitive denizens of Witch-Face Mountain felt that the admission of Narcissa Hanway's testimony to consideration and credibility evinced an essential defect in the law of the land, and the fallibility of all human reasoning. What distorted impression might not so appalling an event make upon one so young, so feminine, so inexperienced! ”

“ No breath of wind stirred the leaves, or rippled the surface of the little pond. The lethargy of the hour had descended even upon the towering pine-trees, growing on the precipitous slope of the mountain, and showing their topmost plumes just above the frowning, gray crag—their melancholy song was hushed. The silent masses of dazzling white clouds were poised motionless in the ambient air, high above the valley and the misty expanse of the distant, wooded ranges.
A lazy, lazy day, and very, very warm. ”

“ Splash into the clear fair stream whose translucent depths tell of its birthplace among the mountain springs—how the silver spray showers about as the pursuers surge through the ford leaving behind them a foamy wake!—and now they are pressing hard up the steep ascent of the opposite bank, and galloping furiously along a level stretch of road, with the fences and trees whirling by, and the September landscape flying on the wings of the wind. ”

“ There was a sprinkle of gray in his hair, and he remembered the jollities of the wedding,—incongruous recollection,—and once more he looked at the stark figure, its face covered with a white cloth, which had been done in a sentiment of atonement for the unseemly publicity of its fate.
In sparsely settled communities, death, being rare, retains much of the terror which custom lessens in the dense crowds of cities. There death is met at every corner. ”

“ Hence a prosperous landed proprietor, the leader of the rural faction, dwelling midway between the town and the range of mountains that bounded the county on the north and east, bethought himself one day of Jenkins Hollis, whose famous riding had been the feature of a certain dashing cavalry charge—once famous, too—forgotten now by all but the men who, for the first and only time in their existence, penetrated in those war days the blue mountains fencing in their county from the outer world, and looked upon the alien life beyond that wooded barrier. ”

“ In a certain slant of the diurnal light, even on bright nights at the full of the moon, sometimes in the uncanny electric flicker smitten from a storm-cloud, a gigantic peaked sinister face is limned on the bare, sandy slope, so definite, with such fixity of lineament, that one is amazed that the perception of it came no earlier, and is startled when it disappears. ”

“ A breath of balsams comes on the freshening wind—the lungs expand to meet it. There is a new aspect in the scene; a revivifying current thrills through the blood; a sudden ideal beauty descends on prosaic creation.
"'Pears like I can't git my breath good in them flat countries," says Jenkins Hollis to himself, as "John Barleycorn" improves his speed under the exhilarating influence of the wind. "I'm nigh on to sifflicated every time I goes down yander ter Colbury" (with a jerk of his wooden head in the direction of the village) . ”

“ Sneed replied succinctly, hardly daring to trust himself to an unnecessary word; for the staring men that had gathered at a respectful distance about the blazing spring numbered nine or ten, and an ill-advised tongue might precipitate an immediate attack on the dismounted, unarmed group awaiting his return at the verge of the bluff. A genuine thrill of terror shook him as he realized that at any moment he might be followed by men as ill prepared as he to cope with the horse-thief's gang.
"I see ye rid," said Nick Peters, observing his acquaintance's spurs. ”

“ He had reached his horse, and had placed one foot in the stirrup, when, chancing to glance back over his shoulder, he saw Narcissa Hanway's white, flowerlike face, her bonnet pushed far back on her tawny yellow hair, both arms outstretched in a gesture of negation and repulsion toward the apartment where the jury sat, while a dark-haired, slow man urged her forward, one hand on her shoulder, and the old mountain woman followed with insistence and encouragement. ”

“ There had been much talk of an organized band who had assisted in these and similar exploits in secluded districts of the county, but Persimmon Sneed had given it scant credence until he beheld several armed men lagging in the rear, their amazed, uncouth faces, under their broad-brimmed hats, all weird and unnatural in the pervasive yellow glow. They had, evidently, been led to the spot by the strange flare in the heart of the woods; but Nick Peters could well enough pretermit his surprise and whatever spiritual terrors might assail him till a more convenient season for their indulgence. ”

“ The rough wooden amphitheatre, a bold satire on the stately Roman edifice, was filled with the denizens of Colbury and the rosy rural faces of the country people of Kildeer County; and within the charmed arena the competitors for the blue ribbon and the saddle and bridle to be awarded to the best rider were just now entering, ready mounted, from a door beneath the tiers of seats, and were slowly making the tour of the circle around the judges' stand. ”

“ The pallid circling mists enveloped the world, and limited the outlook to a periphery of scant fifty paces; occasionally becoming tenuous, as if to suggest the dark looming of the mountain across the narrow valley, and the precipice close at hand behind the building, then once more intervening, white and dense of texture, forming a background which imparted a singular distinctness to the figures grouped in the open space of the barn beneath the shadowy loft. ”

“ A glimpse of her mother at the window added its suggestion—a lean, sallow, lined face, full of anxious furrows, with a rim of scanty gray-streaked hair about the brow, with spectacles perched above, and beneath the flabby jaw a scraggy, wrinkled neck.
"An' she's so powerful pretty!" Theodosia exclaimed, with an irreverent burst of laughter, "I don't wonder ye feel obligated ter bless her soul."
"She 'pears plumb beautiful to my mind," he said unequivocally,—"all of a piece with her beautiful life." ”

“ The stir of the group in the space outside was asserted anew, with their low-toned fitful converse; a black-and-white ox in the weed-grown garden emitted a deep, depressed low of remonstrance against the rain, and the irking of the yoke, and the herbage just beyond his reach. The jurymen might see him through the logs, and now and again one of them mechanically ducked his head to look out upon the dismal aspect of the chimney and orchard, round which so many horses and wagons had not gathered since the daughter of the house was long ago married here. ”

“ Near at hand, a cucumber-tree, with its great broad green leaves and its deep red cones, leaning over the rocks, and spanning this illusive gray landscape from the zenith to the immediate foreground, gave the only touch of color to the scenic simulacrum in many a gradation of neutral tone. The jurymen hovered about under the boughs for a time, and then came back, still harassed and anxious, to their den, with perhaps some new question of doubt. For those without could perceive that once more they were crowding about the bier and talking together in knots. ”

“ Ever and anon the sound of the mare's troubled call rang on the air. Then the colt would come with a burst of speed, a turbulent rush, out of the underbrush, and, with its keen head-tones of a whinny, all funnily treble and out of tune, dash on in advance. The rider of this preoccupied steed was a grizzled, lank, thin-visaged mountaineer, with a tuft of beard on his chin, but a shaven jowl, where, however, the black-and-gray stubble of several days' avoidance of the razor put forth unabashed. ”

“ Whatever one's exterior may be, it possesses the unique merit of being one's own, and the aversion to share its traits with another, and that other a stranger, is universal. In this instance the objection was enhanced by the fact that the stranger was a man; ergo, in Hanway's opinion, more or less clumsy and burly and ugly; the masculine type of his acquaintance presenting to his mind few of the superior elements of beauty. He resented the liberty the stranger took in resembling Narcissa, and he resented still more Selwyn's effrontery in discovering the likeness. ”

“ Now, these mountaineers,"—he spoke as if she had no part among them, forgetting it, indeed, for the moment,—"they let marble and silver and iron, and gold too, all sorts of natural wealth, millions and millions of the finest hard-wood timber, lie here undeveloped, without making the least effort to realize on it, without lifting a finger. They have got no enterprise in the world, and they are the most dilatory, slowest gang I ever ran across in my life." ”

“ Hite shoved the chair in which he had been seated to Persimmon Sneed, who was lugubriously rubbing his eyes, and flung himself down on a boulder lying almost outside of the recess in the moonlight, his long booted and spurred legs stretching far across the entrance. His hat on the back of his head, its brim upturned, revealed his bluff open face—it held no craft surely ”