Orders were promptly obeyed. Flossie drained the cup but no sooner had Flossie passed the powdered egg shells than the witch left her. Her head went back to its natural size. Nevertheless Flossie Eskew died that night.

"Didn't send for the wizard soon enough," Seth Eeling said.

Some believed in the powers of both, though neither witch nor wizard would give the other a friendly look, much less a word.

Pol Gentry was never downright friendly with any, though she would hoe for a neighbor in return for something to eat. "My place is too rocky to raise anything," she excused herself. And whatever was given her, Pol would carry home then and there. "Them's fine turnips you've got, Mistress Darby," she said one day, and Sallie Darby up and handed her a double handful of turnips. Pol opened the front of her dirty calico mother-hubbard, put the turnips inside against her dirty hide and tripped off with them. Nor was Pol Gentry one to sit home at tasks such as knitting or piecing a quilt. But everyone admitted there never was a better hand the country over at raising pigs. So Pol swapped pigs for knitting. She had to have long yarn stockings, mittens, a warm hood, for her pigs had to be fed and tended winter and summer. Others needed meat as much as Pol needed things to keep her warm. Tillie Bocock was glad to knit stockings for the old witch in return for a plump shoat. Tillie had several mouths to feed. Her man was a no-account, who spent his time fishing in summer and hunting in winter, so that all the work fell to Tillie. Day by day she tended and fed the shoat. It was black-and-white-spotted and fat as a butterball, she and the little Bococks bragged.

"Another month and you can butcher that shoat." Old Pol would stop in at Tillie's every time she went down the mountain, eyeing the fat pig.

Sometimes she would put the palms of her dirty hands against her mouth and rub the black hair back to this side and to that, then she'd stroke her chin as though her black beard hung far down. Pol would make a clucking sound with her tongue. "Wisht I was chawin' on a juicy sparerib or gnawin' me a greasy pig's knuckle right now," she'd say. Then Pol would begin on a long tale of witchery: how she had seen young husbands under the spell of her craft grow faithless to young, pretty wives; how children gained power over their parents through her and had their own will in all things, even to getting title to house and land from them before it should have been theirs. She told how Luther Trumbo's John took with barking fits like a dog and became a hunchback over night.

"Why? Becaze he made mauck of Pol Gentry, that's why!" She rubbed a dirty hand around her hairy mouth and cackled gleefully.

At that Tillie Bocock turned to her frightened children huddled behind her chair. "Get you gone, the last one of you out to the barn. Such witchy talk is not for young ears."

Then old Pol Gentry scowled at Tillie and her sharp eyes flashed and she puffed her lips in and out. Pol didn't say anything but Tillie could see she was miffed and there was in her sharp eyes a look that said, "Never mind, Tillie Bocock, you'll pay for this."

Next morning Pol Gentry was up bright and early, rattling the pot on the stove and grumbling to herself. "I'll show Tillie Bocock a thing or two.

So I will. Sending her young ones out of my hearing."

Far down the ridge Tillie Bocock was up early too, for already the sun was bright and there was corn to hoe. Tillie and the children had washed the dishes, and she had carried out the soapy dishwater with cornbread scraps mixed in it and poured it in the trough for the pig. "Spotty,"

they called their pet. The Bococks had no planks with which to make a separate pen for the spotted pig so they kept its trough in a corner of the chicken lot.

"Mazie, you and Saphroney go fetch a bucket of cold water for Spotty,"

Tillie called to her two eldest. "A pig likes a cold drink now and then same as we do." So off the children went with the cedar bucket to the spring. When they returned they poured some of the water into the dishpan and Spotty sucked it up greedily while they hurried to pour the rest into the mudhole where the pig liked to wallow.

The sun caked the mud on the pig's sides and legs as it lay grunting contentedly in the chicken yard.

And when Tillie and the children came in from hoeing corn at dinner time Spotty still lay snoozing in the sun. An hour later they returned to toss a handful of turnip greens into the pig. But Spotty didn't even grunt or get up, for on its side was a sleek black cat. A cat with green eyes stretched full length working its claws into the pig's muddy sides, now with the front paws, now with the hind ones.

The children screamed and stomped a foot. "Scat! Scat!" they cried but the black cat only turned its fierce eyes toward them.

Hearing their screams Tillie came running out. She fluttered her apron at the cat to scare it away but it only snarled, showing its teeth, lifting its bristling whiskers. Then Tillie picked up a stone and threw it as hard as she could, striking the cat squarely between the eyes. It screamed like a human, Tillie told afterwards. Loud and wild it screamed, and leaping off the pig it darted off quick as a flash.

When the cat reached the cliff halfway up the mountain that led toward Pol Gentry's it turned around and looked back. With one paw uplifted it wiped its face for there was blood pouring out of the cut between its shining green eyes. It twitched its mouth till the black fur stood up.

"Come, get up, Spotty!" Tillie and the children coaxed the pig. "Here's more dishwater slop for you. Here's some cornbread!"

Slowly the pig got to its knees, then to its feet. It grunted once only and fell over dead.

After that old Pol Gentry wasn't seen for days. But when Tillie Bocock did catch sight of her, Pol turned off from the footpath and hurried away. Even so Tillie saw the deep gash in Pol's forehead oozing blood right between her eyes. She saw Pol Gentry's mouth widen angrily and the black hair about it twitch like that of a snarling cat, as she slunk away.

THE DEER WOMAN AND THE FAWN

Amos Tingley, a bachelor, and a miser as well, lived in Laurel Hollow.

Nearby was a salt lick for deer. Often he saw them come there a few at a time, lick the salt, and scamper away. There were two he noticed in particular, a mother and its fawn. They had come nearer than the salt lick--into his garden--more than once and trampled what they did not like, or nibbled to the very ground things that suited their taste, vegetables that Amos had toiled to plant and grow. He didn't want to harm the animals if it could be helped so Amos thought to make a pet of the fawn. When a boy he had had a pet fawn, carried it in his arms. He even brought it into the house and when it grew older the little creature followed at his heels like a dog. He reached a friendly hand toward this fawn in his garden but it kicked up its heels and fairly flew down the garden path. However, the mother, watching her chance when Amos had returned to the house, led her fawn into the garden again and together they ate their fill of the choicest green things.

It annoyed Amos Tingley no little. He determined to put a stop to it.

One evening he greased his old squirrel rifle. He took lead balls out of the leather pouch that hung on the wall, rolled them around in the palm of his hand, and wondered when his chance would come to use them. As he sat turning the thoughts over in his mind pretty Audrey Billberry and her little girl, Tinie, came along the road. Audrey was a widow. Had been since Tinie was six months old. Some wondered how she got along.

But Audrey Billberry was never one to complain and if neighbors went there she always urged them to stay and eat. If it was winter, there was plenty of rabbit stew and turnips and potatoes, or squirrel and quail.

Audrey loved wild meat. "It's cleaner," she'd say, "and sweeter. Sweet meats make pretty looks." Audrey smiled and showed her dimples and little Tinie patted her mother's hand and looked up admiringly into her face. Then off the two would skip through the woods to gather greens or berries, chestnuts or wild turkey eggs, whatever the season might bring.

Sometimes they went hand in hand, Audrey and the child, past Amos Tingley's place.

"Good day, to you," pretty Audrey Billberry would call out and Tinie would say the same. "How goes it with you today, good neighbor?"

"Well enough," Amos answered, "and better still if I can get rid of that pestering deer and her fawn. The two have laid waste my garden patch.

See yonder!" he pointed with the squirrel rifle. "And it won't be good for the two the next time they come nibbling around here!"

Pretty Audrey Billberry gripped little Tinie's hand until the child squealed and hopped on one foot. They looked at each other, then at the gun. Fright came into their eyes. Audrey tried to laugh lightly. "When you kill that deer be sure to bring me a piece, neighbor Tingley," she said, as unconcerned as you please, and away she went with the little girl at her side. When they reached home Audrey Billberry turned the wood button on the door and flung back her head. "Kill a deer and her fawn! There is no fear, Tinie. Why"--she scoffed--"Amos Tingley's got only lead to load his rifle. I saw." She put her hands to her sides and laughed and danced around the room. "Lead can't kill a deer and her fawn. It takes silver! Silver! Do you hear that, Tinie? Silver hammered and molded round to load the gun. And when, I'd like to know, would skinflint Amos Tingley, the miser, ever destroy a silver coin by pounding it into a ball to load a gun? There's nothing to fear. Rest easy, Tinie. Besides all living creatures must eat. It is their right.

Only silver, remember, not lead, can harm the deer. A miser will keep his silver and let his garden go!" She caught little Tinie by both hands and skipped to and fro across the floor, saying over and over, "Only silver can harm the deer."

The wind caught up her words and carried them through the trees, across the ridge into Laurel Hollow.

While Audrey and Tinie skipped and frolicked and chanted, "Only silver can harm the deer," Amos Tingley, the miser, over in Laurel Hollow was busy at work. He took a silver coin from the leather poke in his pocket and hammered it flat on the anvil in his barn. Thin as paper he hammered it until he could roll it easily between thumb and finger. Then around and around he rolled it between his palms until there was a ball as round and as firm as ever was made with a mold. Amos put it in his rifle.

The next morning when he went out to work in his garden there was scarcely a head of cabbage left. The bunch beans he had been saving back and the cut-short beans had been plucked and the row of sweet corn which he had planted so carefully along the fence-row had been stripped to the last roasting ear. He stooped down to look at the earth. "Footprints of the deer and the fawn, without a doubt. But she must have worn an apron or carried a basket to take away so much." Amos shook his head in perplexity. Then he hurried back to the house to get his gun.

"Right here do I wait." He braced himself in the doorway, back to the jam, knees jackknifed, gun cocked. "Here do I wait until I catch sight of that doe and her fawn."

It wasn't long till the two appeared on a nearby ridge, pranking to and fro. Into the forest they scampered, then out again, frisking up their hind feet, then standing still as rocks and looking down at Amos Tingley in his doorway.

Then Amos lifted his gun, pulled the trigger.

The fawn darted away but the deer fell bleeding with a bullet in the leg.

"Let her bleed! Bleed till there's not a drop of blood left in her veins and my silver coin is washed back to my own hands!" That was the wish of Amos Tingley, the miser. He went back into the house and put his gun in the corner.

When darkness came little Tinie Billberry stood sobbing at Amos Tingley's door. "Please to come," she pleaded. "My mother says she'll die if you don't. She wants to make amends!"

"Amends?" gasped Amos Tingley. "Amends for what?"

But Tinie had dashed away in the darkness.

When Amos reached pretty Audrey Billberry's door, he found her pale in the candlelight, her ankle shattered and bleeding. The foot rested in a basin.

"See what you've done, Amos Tingley." The pretty widow lifted tear-dimmed eyes, while Tinie huddled shyly behind her. "A pitcher of water, quick, Tinie, to wash away the blood!"

As the child poured the water over the bleeding foot, Amos heard something fall into the basin. He caught the flash of silver. Amos stood speechless.

In the basin lay the silver ball the miser had made from a coin.

"Never tell!" cried pretty Audrey Billberry, her dark eyes starting from the bloodless face. "Never tell and I promise, I promise and so does Tinie--see we promise together."

The child had put down the pitcher and came shyly to rest her head upon her mother's shoulder, her small hand in Audrey's.

"We promise," they spoke together, "never, never again to bother your garden!"

They kept their word all three, Amos Tingley and pretty Audrey Billberry and little Tinie. But somebody told, for the tale still lives in Laurel Hollow of the miser and the deer woman and the little fawn.