While Uncle Jake was speaking, the travellers had passed beyond the wall, but the declivity on their left was still too steep to accommodate the highway, and so they rode along with the shadows of night on one side of them and pale symptoms of the day on the other. Suddenly a thin stream of fire, accompanied by the sharp crack of a rifle, shot out of the side of the mountain straight at Woodward, and seemed, as one of his companions said afterwards, to pass through him. His horse shied with a tremendous lurch, and Woodward fell to the ground. "He is shot!" cried one of the young men. "What devil's work is this?" exclaimed Uucle Jake. "Cap, you ain't hurt, is you?" Receiving no reply, for Woodward was stunned into semi-unconsciousness, Uncle Jake addressed himself to the bushes-- "Come forth," he cried. "Jestify this deed!" There was a moment's silence, but not a moment's inaction. Uncle Jake leaped from his horse, and, telling the frightened yoxing men to look after Woodward, ran up the mountain-side a quarter of a mile, placed his hands to his mouth, and hallooed three times in rapid succession. Then he heard Poteet's dogs bark, and he hallooed again. This time he was answered from above, and he turned and ran back to where he left Woodward. When he got there he beheld a sight and heard words that made his blood run cold. Woodward was still lying upon the ground, but by his side was kneeling a gaunt and hollow-eyed woman. Her thin grey hair hung loose upon her shoulders and about her eyes, and the ragged sleeves of her gown fluttered wildly as she flung her bony arms in the air. She was uttering loud cries. "Oh, Lordy! it's little Ab! I uv done killed little Ab over ag'in! Oh, my little Ab! It's your pore ole mammy, honey! Oh, Mister! make little Ab wake up an' look at his pore ole mammy!" The two young men from Atlanta were paralysed with horror. When Uncle Jake Norris ran up the mountain to alarm Poteet, the witch-like figure of the woman sprang from the bushes and fell upon Woodward with a loud outcry. The whole occurrence, so strange, so unnatural, and so unexpected, stripped the young men of their power of reasoning; and if the rocks had opened and fiery flames issued forth, their astonishment and perplexity and terror could have been no greater. But if they had been acquainted with the history of this wild-eyed woman,--if they had known that for weeks she had been wandering over the mountain bereft of reason, and seeking an opportunity to avenge with her own hands the murder of Ab Bonner, her son,--they would have been overcome by pity. Uncle Jake Norris understood at once that Ab Bonner's mother had shot Woodward, and he forgot to be merciful. "Woe unto you, woman, ef you have done this deed! Woe unto you an' your'n, Rachel Bonner, ef you have murdered this innocent!" "That he wuz innocent!" exclaimed the woman, swaying back and forth and waving her hands wildly. "The unborn babe wan't no innocenter than little Ab!"