“Old Scythia,” muttered the matron, shuddering and shrinking closer to the side of the bookkeeper, for the strange creature was reported and believed by the ignorant and superstitious of the neighborhood to be powerful and malignant.

“Regulas Rothsay will never take his seat as governor of this State!”

As the beldame repeated and emphasized these words, she raised her hand with a prophetic gesture and advanced upon the group of pedestrians.

“Now, then, you old crow!  What are you up to with your croaking?” demanded Mr. Marwig.  “Look here, Mistress Beelzebub!  Do you know that you are a very lucky woman to live in a land where not only may a barefooted boy rise to the highest honors by talent and perseverance, but where a malignant old witch may torture and terrify her neighbors without fear of the ducking stool or the stake?” he demanded.

The beldame looked at him scornfully, and disdained to reply.

“Wait!” said a stout, dark, middle-aged, black-whiskered man, Timothy Ryland by name, and one of the managers of the “works” by state.  “Wait, I want to question this miserable lunatic.  She may have got wind of something.  Tell me, old mother, why will not the governor-elect take his seat to-morrow?”

“Because Fate forbids it,” solemnly replied the crone.

“Will the governor be—­murdered?”

“No; Regulas Rothsay has not an enemy in the world!”

“Will he be killed on the railroad, or kidnapped?”

“No!”

“Will he be taken suddenly ill?”

“No!”

“What then in the fiend’s name is to prevent his taking his seat to-morrow?” impatiently demanded the manager.

“An evil so dire, so awful, so mysterious, that its like never happened on this earth!”

“Arrest her, Mr. Ryland!  She ought to be locked up until she could be sent to the asylum!” exclaimed old Marwig.

“I have no power to do so, my friend,” replied the manager.

“Why, where is she?” inquired Mrs. Bounce, trembling.  “Who saw her go?”

No one answered, but every one looked around.  Not a trace of the witch could be seen.  She had passed like a dark cloud from among them, and was gone.

It was a glorious day in June.  A long, deep, green valley lay low between two lofty ridges of the Cumberland mountains, running north and south for ten miles, and near the boundary lines of three States.  This lovely vale was watered by a merry, sparkling little river called the Whirligig, which furnished the power for the huge machinery of the great firm of Rockharrt & Sons, proprietors of the Plutus iron mines and the North End foundries, which supplied the mighty engines on the great lines of railroad from the East to the West, and whose massive buildings, forges, furnaces, store-houses and laborers’ cottages occupied all the ground between the foot of the mountain and the banks of the river, on both sides of the Whirligig, at the upper or north end of the valley, where a substantial bridge connected the two shores.