If the twig bent low to the earth you could count on it that was the spot where the well should be dug. To mark the spot Noah stuck the twig at once into the earth. Mischievous boys sometimes slipped around, pulled up the peach branch and threw it away. Again there would be a doubting Thomas who sought to test the water witch's power by stealing away the peach branch and dropping in its place a pebble. But Noah was not to be defeated. He forthwith cut another branch, repeated the ceremony, and located the exact spot again. Whereupon neighbor menfolk pitched in and dug the well. Not all in one day, of course. It took several days but their labors were always rewarded with clear, cold water at last. A well once dug where Noah directed never went dry. That was his boast as long as he lived. However, it was not so much his power to find water that strengthened the faith of people in the water witch. It was what happened on Dog Slaughter Creek. The Mosleys, a poor family, had squatted on a miserable place there. One day the baby of the lot toddled off without being missed by the other nine children of the flock. When Jake Mosley and his wife Norie came in from the tobacco patch they began to search frantically for the babe, screaming and crying as they dashed this way and that. They looked under the house, in the well, in the barn. They even went to neighbors' pig lots; the Mosleys had none of their own. "I've heard of a sow or a boar pig too eating up the carcass of a child," a neighbor said. "Maybe the babe's roamed off into Burdick's pasture and the stallion has tromped her underfoot," Jake opined. With lighted pine sticks to guide their steps they searched the pasture. There was no trace even of a scrap of the child's dress anywhere to be seen on ground or fence. At last someone said, "Could be a water witch might have knowing to find a lost child!" And the frantic parents moaned, "Could be. Send for the water witch." It was after midnight that neighbors came bringing the water diviner. "Give me a garmint of the lost child," Noah spoke with authority, "a garmint that the little one has wore that's not been washed." The mother tearfully produced a bedraggled garment. The water witch took it in his hand, sniffed it, turned it wrongside out, sniffed it again. "Now have you got a lock of the little one's hair?" He looked at Norie, moaning on the shuck tick bed, then at Jake. They stared at each other. At last Norie raised up on her elbow. They did have a lock of the babe's hair. "Mind the time she nigh strangled to death with croup"--the mother fixed weary eyes on the father of her ten children--"and we cut off a lock of her hair and put it in the clock?" In one bound Jake Mosley crossed the floor and reached the clock on the mantel. Sure enough there was the little lock of hair wrapped around with a thread. Without a word Jake handed it to the water witch.