BENNY’S

that took them to this would-be island, and following
an almost imperceptible wood path, came within sight
of the Witch’s hut. It was a deserted, useless, wood-
chopper’s hut, which the mysterious creature whom
the children called a witch had taken possession of
not long before. Here Fanny drew back, “O
Benny, I am afraid,” said she.

“Humph! she can’t hurt you in the daytime,” said

Benny. “She ain’t no different in the daytime from
any other old woman. It’s only nights she is a
witch.”

Fanny allowed herself to be led a few steps further,
and then drew back again. “O Benny,” said she,
“there’s her broomstick ! there it is, ‘right outside o’
the door—and O Benny, Benny, there’s her old black
cat!”

“Wal, what on it, hey? What on it?” creaked a
dreadful voice close behind them. Then, indeed,
Fanny shrieked and tried to run, but Benny’s hand
held her fast. She hid her face against Benny’s arm
and sobbed.

It was the old Witch her very self. She looked at
them out of her glittering eyes —O how she did look
at them!—with her head drooped until her chin
rested on her chest. This seemed to bring the
arrows of her eyes to bear upon the enemy with
greater force and precision.

“There ain’t any law ag’in my having a ca¢ and a
broomstick, is there?”’? she asked in a voice like the
cawing of a crow, bringing her staff down with a
thump at the words “cat” and“ broomstick.” “What
are you skeered of?”

“Why, you’re queer, you know,” said Benny des-
perately. . .

“ Queer, gueer ?” piped the Witch; and then she
laughed, or had a dreadful convulsion, Benny couldn’t
tell which, ending in a long, gurgling “ Hoo-o0-00!”
on a very high key. “Now, s’pose you tell me what
is °t makes me queer,” said she, sitting down on a
log and extracting from the rags on her bosom a

-pipe, which she prepared to smoke.

“Whew!” whistled Benny, “’twould take me from
now till Christmas ; I’d rather you’d tell me.”

The crone lighted her pipe. The match flaring
upon her wrinkled, copper-colored face and its gaunt
features made her hideous. Poor little Fanny, who
ventured to peep out at this moment, sobbed louder,
and begged to go to her mother. The old woman
puffed away at her pipe, fixing her gaze upon the
children.

WIGWAM.,

“Got a mother, hey?” said she.

“Yes.”

“ And a father?”

“ Yes.”

“Um-m-in.”

She puffed and gazed.

“ You wouldn’t like to see *em shot?”

At this Benny stood speechless, and Fanny set up
such a cry to go home that Benny was afraid he
should have to take her away — that is, if the Witch
would let him. He began to consider his chances,
Still the more terrible the old Witch seemed, the
more Benny wanted to see and hear her. He whis-
pered to Fanny:

“ She won't hurt you, Pettikins — she can’t; I won't
let her. Hush a minute, and see what I’m going to
say to her!”

Fanny hushed a little, and Benny fixed an auda-
cious gaze upon the Witch—or a gaze which he
meant should be audacious. “What zs the matter
with you?” said he.

The old woman removed her pipe and sat holding
it with her forefinger lapped over it like a hook.

“They call it ‘exterminated,’” said she, pushing
back the broad-brimmed, high-crowned man’s hat that
she wore, and showing her gray, ragged locks. “I’m
exterminated. You don’t know what that is, I s’pose?”

“Exterminated, ex-/ev-min-ated,” said Benny,
scratching his head, “ why, to — to — drive out —to
—-ah — put an end to — to — to — destroy utterly.”

“JT don’t know what your book meaning is. I
didn’t get mine from books. I got it all the way
along — began to get it when I wasn’t much bigger’n
that little gell,” said the Witch, pointing at Fanny with
her pipe. “I didn’t know what it meant when I first
heard it, but I know now. Hoo-00-00-00!”

“T wish you’d tell us about it,” said Benny. “Tell
us about beginning to learn it when you wa’n’t much
bigger’n Pettikins.”

“That’s when the colonel said we must move
west’ard,” said the witch, laying her pipe down on
the log, leaning her elbows on her knees, and resting
her bony jaws in the palms of her hands. “ Injuns,
before they’re exterminated, stick to their homes like
other folks.”

“You ain’t an Jnjun, be you!” gasped Benny,
with a look and tone which expressed volumes of
consternation and disappointment at her utter failure
to come up to his ideal Indian. Why, she wasn’t the
least bit like the pictures! She wasn’t like the mag-