"Death is death anywhar," said the mountaineer gloomily. "No. Get you a mile or two of iron fence, and stone gates, and lots of sculptured marble angels around, and death is peace, or rest, or heaven, or paradise, according to your creed and the taste of the subject; but here you are done for and dead." Hanway, in the limited experience of the mountaineer, could not follow the theory, and he forbore to press it further. "Well," Selwyn resumed, "they took him home, and I was glad to see him go. I was glad to see them filling that hole up. I took a pious interest in that. I should have felt it was waiting for me. I shoveled some of the earth back myself." The wind surged around the house, and shook the outer doors. The rain trampled on the roof like a squadron of cavalry. With his fate standing ever behind him, almost visibly looking over his shoulder, although he saw it not, the valley man was a pathetic object to the mountaineer. Hanway's eyes were hot and burned as he looked at him; if he had been but a little younger, they might have held tears. But Hanway had passed by several years his majority, and esteemed himself exempt from boyish softness. Selwyn shook off the impression with a shiver, and bent forward to mend the fire. "Where were you yesterday?" he asked, seeking a change of subject. "At home sowin' turnip seed, mos'ly. I never hearn nuthin' 'bout'n it all." Selwyn threw himself back in his chair, his brow corrugated impatiently at this renewal of the theme, and in the emergency he even resorted to the much-mooted point of the thoroughfare. "I suppose all the family there are dead gone on that road?" he sought to make talk. "Dad an' aunt M'nervy don't keer one way nor another, but my sister air plumb beset fur the jury of view to put it through." "Why?" Selwyn had a mental vision of some elderly, thrifty mountain dame with a long head turned toward the enhancement of the values of a league or so of mountain land. Hanway, slow and tenacious of impressions, could not so readily rouse a vital interest in another subject. He still gazed with melancholy eyes at the fire, and his heart felt heavy and sore. "Waal," he answered mechanically, "she 'lows she wants ter see the folks go up an' down, an' up an' down." Selwyn's blue eyes opened. "Folks?" he asked wonderingly. The rarest of apparitions on Witch-Face Mountain were "folks." Hanway roused himself slightly, and raucously cleared his throat to explain. "She 'lows thar'll be cornsider'ble passin'. Folks, in the fall o' the year, mought be a-wagonin' of chestnuts over the mounting an' down ter Colb'ry; an' thar's the Quarterly Court days; some attends, leastwise the jestices; an' whenst they hev preachin' in the Cove; an' wunst in a while thar _mought_ be a camp-meetin'. She sets cornsider'ble store on lookin' at the folks ez will go up an' down."