She stopped above him and he could see her face. Mr. Hobbs was chilled to the bone. Her arm was raised, a bony finger pointing to the treetops above her hovel.
"He's gone. Didn't you see him? He went off among the treetops. You won't see him again." She waited a moment, and then went on, in most ingratiating tones: "Would you care to come into my house? I can show you the road he took. You—"
But Mr. Hobbs, his hair on end, had dropped the rein of King's horse and was putting boot to his own beast, whirling frantically into the path that led away from the hated, damned spot! Down the road he crashed, pursued by witches whose persistence put to shame the efforts of those famed ladies of Tam O'Shanter in the long ago; if he had looked over his shoulder, he might have discovered that he was followed by a riderless horse, nothing more.
But a riderless horse is a gruesome thing—sometimes.
CHAPTER IX
STRANGE DISAPPEARANCES
The further adventures of Mr. Hobbs on this memorable afternoon are quickly chronicled, notwithstanding the fact that he lived an age while they were transpiring, and experienced sensations that would still be fresh in his memory if he lived to be a hundred.
He was scarcely well out of sight of the cabin when his conscience began to smite him: after all, his patron might be in dire need of his services, and here he was, fleeing from an old woman and a whiff of smoke! Hobbs was not a physical coward, but it took more than a mile of hard-ridden conscience to bring his horse to a standstill. Then, with his heart in his mouth, he slowly began to retrace his steps, walking where he had galloped a moment before. A turn in the road brought him in view of something that caused him to draw rein sharply. A hundred yards ahead, five or six men were struggling with a riderless bay horse.
"My Gawd!" ejaculated Hobbs. "It's his horse! I might have known!"