Rufe felt that he must not leave this matter in uncertainty.  He must know whether that strange object under the tree could be intended as a warning to him to cease in time his evil ways—­ tormenting Towse, pulling Tennessee’s hair, shirking the woodpile, and squandering Birt’s rifle balls.  He even feared this might be a notification that the hour of retribution had already come!

He scuttled off the platform, and began to swing himself from bough to bough.  He was nervous and less expert than when he had climbed up the tree.  He lost his grip once, and crashed from one branch to another, scratching himself handsomely in the operation.  The owl, emboldened by his retreat, flew awkwardly down upon the scaffold, and perched there, its head turned askew, and its great, round eyes fixed solemnly upon him.

Suddenly a wild hoot of derision rent the air; the echoes answered, and all the ravine was filled with the jeering clamor.

“The wust luck in the worl’!” plained poor Rufe, as the ill-omened cry rose again and again. “‘Tain’t goin’ ter s’prise me none now, ef I gits my neck bruk along o’ this resky foolishness in this cur’ous place whar owELS watch from the lookout ez dead men hev lef’.”

He came down unhurt, however.  Then he sidled about a great many times through “the laurel,” for he could not muster courage for a direct approach to the strange object he had descried.  The owl still watched him, and bobbed its head and hooted after him.  When he drew near the lightning-scathed tree, he paused rooted to the spot, gazing in astonishment, his hat on the back of his tow head, his eyes opened wide, one finger inserted in his mouth in silent deprecation.

For there stood a man dressed in black, and with a dark straw hat on his head.  He had gray whiskers, and gleaming spectacles of a mildly surprised expression.  He smiled kindly when he saw Rufe.  Incongruously enough, he had a hammer in his hand.  He was going down the ravine, tapping the rocks with it.  And Rufe thought he looked for all the world like some over-grown, demented woodpecker.

CHAPTER IV.

As Rufe still stood staring, the old gentleman held out his hand with a cordial gesture.

“Come here, my little man!” he said in a kind voice.

Rufe hesitated.  Then he was seized by sudden distrust.  Who was this stranger? and why did he call, “Come here!”

Perhaps the fears already uppermost in Rufe’s mind influenced his hasty conclusion.  He cast a horrified glance upon the old gentleman in black, a garb of suspicious color to the little mountaineer, who had never seen men clad in aught but the brown jeans habitually worn by the hunters of the range.  He remembered, too, the words of an old song that chronicled how alluring were the invitations of Satan, and with a frenzied cry he fled frantically through the laurel.