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                  THE MYSTERY OF WITCH-FACE MOUNTAIN

                       CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK




                      THE MYSTERY OF WITCH-FACE
                               MOUNTAIN

                          AND OTHER STORIES

                                  BY

                       CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK


                         BOSTON AND NEW YORK
                    HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
                    The Riverside Press, Cambridge
                                 1895




                           Copyright, 1895,
                         BY MARY N. MURFREE.

                        _All rights reserved._

          _The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._

           Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.




                              CONTENTS.


                                                          PAGE
        THE MYSTERY OF WITCH-FACE MOUNTAIN                   1
        TAKING THE BLUE RIBBON AT THE COUNTY FAIR          165
        THE CASTING VOTE                                   200




                  THE MYSTERY OF WITCH-FACE MOUNTAIN.


I.

The beetling crags that hang here and there above the gorge hold in
their rugged rock sculpture no facial similitudes, no suggestions. The
jagged outlines of shelving bluffs delineate no gigantic profile
against the sky beyond. One might seek far and near, and scan the vast
<DW72> with alert and expectant gaze, and view naught of the semblance
that from time immemorial has given the mountain its name. Yet the
imagination needs but scant aid when suddenly the elusive simulacrum
is revealed to the eye. 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 <DW72>, 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.

Disappearing as completely as a fancy, few there are who have ever
seen it who have not climbed from the herder's trail across the
narrow wayside stream and up the rugged mountain <DW72>s to the spot
where it became visible. There disappointment awaits the explorer. One
finds a bare and sterile space, from which the hardy chickweed can
scarcely gain the sustenance for timorous sproutings; a few
outcropping rocks; a series of transverse gullies here and there,
washed down to deep indentations; above the whole a stretch of burnt,
broken timber that goes by the name of "fire-scald," and is a relic of
the fury of the fire which was "set out" in the woods with the mission
to burn only the leaves and undergrowth, and which, in its
undisciplined strength, transcended its instructions, as it were, and
destroyed great trees. And this is all. But once more, at a coigne of
vantage on the opposite side of the gorge, and the experience can be
utilized in differentiating the elements that go to make up the weird
presentment of a human countenance. It is the fire-scald that suggests
the great peaked brown hood; the oblong sandy stretch forms the pallid
face; the ledges outline the nose and chin and brow; the eyes look out
from the deep indentations where the <DW72> is washed by the currents
of the winter rains; and here and there the gullies draw heavy lines
and wrinkles. And when the wind is fresh and the clouds scud before
it, in the motion of their shadows the face will seem to mow at the
observer, until the belief comes very readily that it is the exact
counterpart of a witch's face.

Always the likeness is pointed out and insisted on by the denizens of
Witch-Face Mountain, as if they had had long and intimate acquaintance
with that sort of unhallowed gentry, and were especially qualified to
pronounce upon the resemblance.

"Ain't it jes' like 'em, now? Ain't it the very moral of a witch?"
Constant Hite demanded, one gusty day, when the shadows were a-flicker
in the sun, and the face seemed animated by the malice of mockery or
mirth, as he pointed it out to his companion with a sort of triumph in
its splenetic contortions.

He was a big, bluff fellow, to whose pride all that befell him seemed
to minister. He was proud of his length of limb, and his hundred and
eighty pounds of weight, and yet his slim appearance. "Ye wouldn't
believe it now, would ye?" he was wont to say when he stepped off