exaggerated wild thing might she not say, unintentionally inculpating half Witch-Face Mountain in robbery and murder! Constant Hite, as he bluffly entered the passageway, his head up, his eyes wide and bright, his vigorous step elastic and light, gave no token of the spiritual war he had waged as he came. Already he felt in great jeopardy. On account of his illicit vocation he could ill abide the scrutiny of the law. With scant proof, he argued, a moonshiner might be suspected of highway robbery and murder. As he had journeyed hither with the constable and his fellows, who conserved the air of disinterested spectators, but who he knew had been summoned to aid the officer in case he should evade or delay, when he would have been forthwith arrested, he had been sorely tempted to deny having ever seen the stranger, in whose company he had spent an hour or so of the previous day. He had been able to put the lie from him with a normal moral impulse. He did not appreciate the turpitude of perjury. He esteemed it only a natural lie invested with pomp and circumstance; and the New Testament on which he should be sworn meant no more to his unlettered conscience than the horn-book, since he knew as little of its contents. But a lie is a skulking thing, and he had scant affinity with it. He thought, with a sort of numb wonderment, that it was strange he should feel no more compassion for the object stretched out here, dumb, dead, bruised, and bloody, which so short a space since he had seen full of life and interest, animated by a genial courtesy and graced with learning and subtle insight; now so unknowing, so unlettered, so blind! Whither went this ethereal investiture of life?--for it was not mere being; one might exist hardily enough without it. Did the darkness close over it, too, or was it not the germ of the soul, the budding of that wider knowledge and finer aspiration to flower hereafter in rarer air? He did not know; he only vaguely cared, and he reproached himself dully that he cared no more. For he--his life was threatened! With the renewal of the thought he experienced a certain animosity toward the man that he should not have known enough to take better care of himself. Why must he needs die here, in this horrible unexplained way, and leave other men, chance associates, to risk stretching hemp for murder? He felt his strong life beating in his throat almost to suffocation at the mere suggestion. Again the lie tempted him, to be again withstood; and as he strode into the room upon the calling of his name, he saw how futile, how flimsy, was every device, for, fluttering in the coroner's hand, he recognized the sketch of the "Witch-Face" which the dead man had made, and the masterly drawing of his own imposing figure in the foreground. He had forgotten it utterly for the time being. In the surprise and confusion that had beset him, it had not occurred to him to speculate how he had chanced to be subpoenaed, how the idea could