Wolfs Head | Page 2

a skellington's grisly face peerin' at
him through a crack in the bark."
The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent
in expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had
bepainted the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous
strokes of red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal

air was dank, with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on the
western side, and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above
the massive, purple mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity
of tint, a suave, saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid vermilion
that lured the eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively at it as he
resumed:
"Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez
skellingtons. He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till
he reached Colbury, an' thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk a
hand in the game. Skellingtons, he said, didn't grow on trees
spontaneous, an' he hed an official interes' in human relics out o' place.
So he kem,--the tree is 'twixt hyar an' my house thar on the rise,--an',
folks! the tale war plain. Some man chased off 'n the face of the yearth,
hid out from the law,--that's the way Meddy takes it,--he hed clomb the
tree, an' it bein' holler, he drapped down inside it, thinkin' o' course he
could git out the way he went in. But, no! It monght hev been deeper 'n
he calculated, or mo' narrow, but he couldn't make the rise. He died still
strugglin', fer his long, bony fingers war gripped in the wood--it's rotted
a deal sence then."
"Who was the man?" asked Seymour.
"Nobody knows,--nobody keers 'cept' Meddy. She hev wep' a bushel o'
tears about him. The cor'ner 'lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock
rifle he hed with him that it mus' hev happened nigh a hunderd years
ago. Meddy she will git ter studyin' on that of a winter night, an' how
the woman that keered fer him mus' hev watched an' waited fer him, an'
'lowed he war deceitful an' de-sertin', an' mebbe held a gredge agin him,
whilst he war dyin' so pitiful an' helpless, walled up in that tree. Then
Meddy will tune up agin, an' mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn't
even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic'lar
afflicted that he hed ter die afoot." Old Kettison glanced about the
circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face distended in a
mocking grin.
"A horrible fate!" exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder.

"Edzac'ly," the old mountaineer assented easily.
"What's her name--Meggy?" asked the journalist, with a mechanical
aptitude for detail, no definite curiosity.
"Naw; Meddy--short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina
Haddox; but I reckon every livin' soul hev forgot' it but me. She is jes
Meddlesome by name, an' meddlesome by natur'."
He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an
expectant mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of
the sumac-bushes heralded an approach.
"That mus' be Meddy now," he commented, "with her salt-risin' bread.
She lowed she war goin' ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol' her
you-uns war lackin'."
For the camp-hunt had already been signalized by divers disasters: the
store of loaves in the wagon had been soaked by an inopportune shower;
the young mountaineer who had combined the offices of guide and
cook was the victim of an accidental discharge of a fowling-piece,
receiving a load of bird-shot full in his face. Though his injury was
slight, he had returned home, promising to supply his place by sending
his brother, who had not yet arrived. Purcell's boast that he could bake
ash-cake proved a bluff, and although the party could and did broil
bacon and even birds on the coals, they were reduced to the extremity
of need for the staff of life.
Hence they were predisposed in the ministrant's favor as she appeared,
and were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and
middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as
she paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to a
swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coarse
gown lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed
well with the red and russet glow of the leaves about her, and its short
waist, close sleeves, and scant skirt, reaching to the instep, the
immemorial fashion of the hills, were less of a grotesque rusticity since
there was prevalent elsewhere a vogue of quasi-Empire modes, of

which the cut of her garb was reminiscent. A saffron kerchief about her
throat had in its folds a necklace of