"An onlucky day, stranger," Hite said slowly. The man of science had drawn in his restive horse, and had turned with a keen, freshened interest toward the witch-face. It was with a look of smiling expectancy that he encountered the aspect of snarling mockery, half visible or half imaginary, of that grim human similitude. The mountaineer's brilliant dark eyes dwelt upon him curiously. However, if he had forborne from prudential motives from earlier asking the stranger's name and vocation, lest more than a casual inquisitiveness be thereby implied, exciting suspicion, such queries were surely not in order at the moment of departure. For Hite had resolved on parting company. "An onlucky day," he reiterated, "an onlucky day. An' this be ez far ez we spen' it tergether. I turn off hyar." So ever present with him was his spirituous conscience--it could hardly be called a bad conscience--that he half expected his companion to demur, and the posse of a deputy marshal to spring up from their ambush in the laurel about them. But the stranger, still with a flavor of preoccupation in his manner, only expressed a polite regret to say farewell so early, and genially offered to shake hands. As with difficulty he forced his horse close to the mountaineer's saddle, Hite looked at the animal with a touch of disparagement. "That thar beastis hev got cornsider'ble o' the devil in him; he'll trick ye some day; ye better look out. Waal, far'well stranger, far'well." The words had a regretful cadence. Whether because of the unwonted interest which the stranger had excited, or the reluctance to relinquish his curiosity, still ungratified, or the pain of parting to an impressionable nature, whose every emotion is acute, Hite hesitated when he had gone some twenty yards straight up the slope above, pushing his horse along a narrow path through the jungle of the laurel, and turned in his saddle to call out again, "Far'well!" The stranger, still at the point where Hite had quitted him, waved his hand and smiled. The jungle closed about the mountaineer, once more pushing on, and still the smiling eyes dwelt on the spot where he had disappeared. "Farewell, my transparent friend," the stranger said, with a half-laugh. "I hope the day is not unlucky enough to put a deputy marshal on your track." And with one more glance at the witch-face, he gathered the reins in his hand and rode on alone along the narrow tangled ways of the herder's trail.