156 THE WITCH OF SMOKY HOLLOW 
I confess that sometimes, if I lingered long about 
the old house, indulging in fancies and speculations 
as to its inhabitants and the purpose for which it 
might have been built, a kind of eerie feeling would 
take possession of me in spite of myself, it was a 
place so utterly lonely and mysterious-looking. 
One day, as I rested on the hill above, a grey old 
gaffer, bent nearly double, chanced to come in sight. 
He lived at a cottage situated in a dip of the moor. 
I thought he ought to know something about the 
house. His poor dim eyes winked and blinked with 
pleasant expectancy when I asked first if he smoked. 
' Sure I does, when I kin git a bit,' he answered ; 
' but 'tain't often, and when I does it ain't up to 
nothin' like.' 
His hands, knotted and wrinkled with the toil of 
more than seventy summers and winters, trembled 
with eagerness when I asked him to share with me 
the contents of a pouch filled with genuine old 
Virginia. Sniffing at it several times, he said : 
' Ye wun't mind me hevin' a whiff now, will ye ? 
I can't keep from this 'ere bit o' 'baccer nohow,' at 
the same time producing a black pipe about an inch 
long from some portion of his garments where it was 
coddled up. Next he fished up a regular tortoise- 
shaped steel tobacco-box, which he filled carefully, 
