Mysticism -- Fiction; Supernatural -- Fiction; Virginia -- Fiction
"Miss Ellice's cabin was high on the mountain. They stopped shouting
when they got nearly up thar. They thought that if before that Miss
Ellice heard them she'd just think it was some jamboree going on
alongside of mountain. James Curdy had such a rule that he could bring
even the drunken ones quiet for a bit. So they stole up the path, and
Jonathan said that the cabin above them looked like a goldy leaf hanging
still, or like an empty nest. So they went up in a string till they got
to where the trees stopped and there was just some bushes and grass. And
then they spread out, and went on in a bunch, and James Curdy cried in a
loud voice, 'Woman, come forth!' But the shut door didn't open. Then he
cried it again, and then he opened that tight mouth of his the third
time. He had more learning than most of the mountain and he used big
words. 'Blaspheming atheist, come forth!' But the others wouldn't stay
quiet any longer, and they shouted, 'Witch! Witch!'
"The door stayed shut, and Jonathan said that the cabin hung like a
goldy leaf or a nest high up on a bright, still winter day. Jonathan
says there was something so still and sunny there that it stilled the
shouting. Then they opened the door, for it wasn't bolted, and those
that could get in went in--James Curdy at the head. Those outside spread
around so's they could catch her if she run out. But Miss Ellice wasn't
at home. She was gone.
"Thar was her half-braided rug and her chair and a little fire on the
hearth. But she wasn't there. It turned out that she had taken a bag and
a basket with her clothes, and a little money she had. And then Mat
Waters found the letter on the table, and Jonathan Morgan read it,
because James Curdy had left his spectacles at home. And if you'll
believe me it was directed to 'James Curdy and Matthew Waters and
Jonathan Morgan and their Company.' Inside it said just this: 'I've
loved this cabin and this mountain. But now I remove myself from among
you. Yet I love this place where I have been, and am, and shall be. Now
abideth Faith, Hope, and Charity, but the greatest of these is Charity.'
And then there was the name, Ann Ellice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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