"Just arrived."
"I would not, under other circumstances, put up in such a place as this; but it is better than the storm raging without."
The hunters, thankful for even such poor shelter, skinned some squirrels, and toasted them before the glowing fire, which Pete had built. Supper over, they drew the benches close about the fire, and while they listened to the raging storm without, conversed on the mysteries of that invisible world, which has always formed an interesting theme for the children of Adam.
"Charles Stevens, only a few years ago, you harbored at your house a wizard," said Louder.
Charles Stevens was half amused and half indignant. He began to expostulate with Louder, when the latter said:
"Nay, nay; I charge you not with bartering with the devil; but list to me. On the selfsame day you found the stranger wounded at the road-side near the spring, we three had been hunting among the hills for deer. Some one had bewitched my gun. I know it, for when I fired, the bullet, which never failed on other occasions to go straight to the mark, went astray. All day long that mysterious stranger had followed us, grievously tormenting us and leading astray our shots, until I loaded my piece with a sixpence and fired at a large fat buck which strutted temptingly before me. Had you probed his wound I trow you would have found my sixpence buried in his side."
At this, the negro, who was crouched in a corner, groaned in agony, while Charles was inclined to treat the matter lightly. Louder related how, while at the lake in the wood, he had been visited by this mysterious apparition, who offered him a book to sign, adding that he knew at once that his tormentor was a wizard or the Devil, that his eyes were in an instant changed to fire, and sulphurous smoke issued from his nostrils.
"Can you ask me if I believe my own eyes and my own ears?" concluded Louder. "Those are truths, and had I signed his book, I would have been tormented by fiends and my soul forever lost."
"They do say the people are ready to cry out on Goody Nurse," put in Bly.
"Goody Nurse! surely not," answered Charles. "She is one of the best women I know. She is kind, good and gentle with all."