"Bless Gawd! hyar's Whitefoot's muzzle jes' ez nat'ral--an' _Me_--waal, sir! don't _I_ look proud!" he cried suddenly, with a note of such succulent vanity, so finely flavored a pride, that the stranger could but laugh at the zest of his triumph. "Do you see the witch-face?" he demanded. "Hesh! hesh!" cried the mountaineer hilariously. "Don't 'sturb me 'bout yer witch-face. Ef thar ain't the buck,--yes, toler'ble fat,--an' with all his horns! An' look at my boot,--actially the spur on it! An' my hat turned up;" he raised his flattered hand to the brim as if to verify its position. "You didn't know you were so good looking, hey?" suggested the amused town man. "My Lord, naw!" declared Hite, laughing at himself, yet laughing delightedly. "I dunno _how_ the gals make out to do without me at all!" The pleased artist laughed, too. "Well, hand it over," he said, as he reached out for the book. "We must be getting out of this sun. I'm not used to it, you see." He put his foot in the stirrup as he spoke, and as he swung himself into the saddle the mountaineer reluctantly closed and relinquished the book. "I'd like ter see it agin, some time or other," he observed. He remembered this wish afterward, and how little he then imagined where and in what manner he was destined to see it again. They rode on together into the dense woods, leaving the wind and the sunshine and the flying clouds fluctuating over the broad expanse of the mountains, and the witch-face silently mowing and grimacing at the world below, albeit seen by no human being except perchance some dweller at the little house on the spur, struck aghast by this unwelcome apparition evoked by the necromancy of the breeze and the sheen and the shadow, marking this as an unlucky day. "That's right smart o' a cur'osity, ain't it?" said Constant Hite complacently, as they jogged along. "When the last gover'mint survey fellers went through hyar, they war plumb smitten by the ole 'oman, an' spent cornsider'ble time a-stare-gazin' at her. They 'lowed they hed never seen the beat." "What was the survey for?" asked the town man, with keen mundane interest.