“An’ get Blacky down on us?  You-all can bet we kep’ quiet an’ didn’ even talk about Blacky to each other.  Wa’al, that went on for a week or two.  Then, one mornin’, while we was all in school, a big storm come up, thunder an’ lightnin’ an’ all.  Suddenly, jes’ after a clap o’ thunder that sounded almos’ as if it had hit the schoolhouse Ol’ Blacky Baldwin walked through the door an’ up to the teacheh’s table.  He was carryin a twisted thing in his hand, like a ram’s horn, an’ I knew it was his cunjerin’ horn, although I hadn’t even seen it befo’.”

“What did the master say when he came in?”

“Nary a word.  It was awful dark an’ the thunder was rumbling aroun’ among the hills.  I took one look at Ol’ Blacky Baldwin’s face, an’ then hid my eyes.  I reckon the others did the same.”

“Why?”

“His face was all shiny with a queer green light, sendin’ up smoke, like ol’ dead wood does sometimes after a rain.”

“Phosphorus evidently,” muttered Hamilton to himself, but he did not want to interrupt the lad now that he had started, and therefore did not discuss the point.

“He walked right up to the teacheh’s table,” continued the younger boy, “an’ he pointed the horn at him, accordin’ to one o’ the boys who says he was peepin’ through his fingers.  I wasn’t lookin’, I wasn’t takin’ any chances.  And then we all heard him say to the teacheh: 

“‘You air goin’ to have a fall an’ be killed.  You air goin’ to have a fear o’ fallin’ all your days, an’ you air goin’ to be drove to places where you’re like to fall.  By night you air goin’ to dream o’ fallin’, an’, wakin’ an’ sleepin’, the fear is laid upon you.’”

“And that was all?”

“That was all,” the mountain boy replied.  “After a bit, I looked up and Ol’ Blacky Baldwin was gone; the teacheh looked peaked an’ seemed kind o’ skeered, but he didn’t say anythin’.”

“Well, it was a little scary,” said Hamilton.  “I don’t wonder it shook him up.”

“That was only the beginnin’,” the storyteller went on.  “About half an hour after that, one o’ the boys dropped his slate pencil on the floor an’ it broke, so he asked the teacheh for a new one.  The slates ‘n’ pencils was kep’ on a shelf over the teacheh’s chair, an’ he got on the chair to reach one down.  We was all watchin’ him, when suddintly he give a groan an’ his eyes rolled back so’s we couldn’t see nothin’ but the whites; his face got all pale, an’ his lips sort o’ blue; he reeled an’ was jes’ goin’ to fall when he sort o’ made a grab at the shelf an’ hung on as though he was fallin’ off a cliff.

“Two of the bigger boys, thinkin’ he had a stroke or somethin’, went up an’ spoke, but he didn’t answer, jes’ hung on to that shelf.  Standin’ on the chair as he was, of course the boys couldn’ make him let go, an’ they couldn’ make him hear or understan’ a mite.  So they pulled up a bench and one of ’em climbed up an’ forced his hand open.  Jes’ like a flash Teacheh grabbed him so hard that he yelled.”