“One day—‘t war ‘bout two year’ ago—thar war a valley-man up hyar a-huntin’ in the mountings with some other fellers, an’ toward sunset he war a-waitin’ at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek, hopin’ ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon luck war ag’in’ him, fer he got nuthin’ but durned tired. So, ez he waited, he grounded his rifle, an’ leaned himself ag’in’ a great big tree ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his head, an’, folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek, he looked into a skellington’s eye-sockets. Thar war 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.