Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
When Hite disclosed the circumstance that on the previous day he had encountered a "stranger man" near the "Witch-Face," there was a palpable sensation among them. They glanced at one another meaningly, and a sudden irritation was perceptible in the coroner's manner as he sat in a rickety chair near the improvised bier.
"Bless Gawd! hyar's Whitefoot's muzzle jes' ez nat'ral an' Me waal, sir! don't I look proud!" he cried suddenly, with a note of such succulent vanity, so finely flavored a pride, that the stranger could but laugh at the zest of his triumph. "Do you see the witch-face?" he demanded. "Hesh! hesh!" cried the mountaineer hilariously. "Don't 'sturb me 'bout yer witch-face.
The woods, the rocks, the black night, the fleering, flouting witch-face, all with an abrupt bound sprang into sudden visibility. A pyramid of yellow flame was surging up from the bubbling surface of the water. Long, dark, slim shadows were speeding through the woods, with strange slants of yellow light; the very skies were a-flicker.
"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.
"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."
"The exact place of the meeting is not material," he said frowningly. But Hite's mercurial interest in the drawing had revived anew. "Thar she be," he exclaimed, so suddenly that the jury started with a common impulse, "the ole witch-face," he pointed at the sketch in the coroner's hand, "a mite ter the east an' a leetle south in the pictur', ez nat'ral ez life!"
I war goin' home from the still, an' I happened ter look up, an' I seen the witch-face, the light jes' dyin' out, jes' fadin' out. She didn't hev time ter make more 'n two or three faces at me, an' then she war gone in the night. It's a turr'ble-lookin' thing at night, stranger. So ye can't tell what makes it, the sile, or what?"
"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.
Thou hast been cast away here on my isle of Straumey." "And Skallagrim where is Skallagrim?" "Skallagrim lives fear not!" "And my comrades, how went it with them?" "But ill, Eric. Ran has them all. Now sleep!" Eric groaned aloud. "I had rather died also than live to hear such heavy tidings," he said. "Witch-work! witch-work! and that fair witch-face wrought it."
"Look at the face of the deceased," he said, with a sort of spare enunciation, coercive somehow in its inexpressiveness. "Ye are sure ye never viewed that man afore yestiddy?" "I hev said so an' swore it," said Hite, a trifle nettled. "Ye rode in comp'ny a hour or mo' an' never asked his name?" "I never axed him no questions, nor he me," replied Hite, "'ceptin' 'bout'n the witch-face.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking