Note 8a — Chapter I · THE HISTORY OF THE WELL.

Tradition avers that, shortly before this accident occurred, an old woman passing near the mine heard a raven—(doubtless a carrion crow)—croaking ominously as it sat on the bough of a tree hard by, and that it distinctly uttered these words, “carpse, carpse, carpse” (i.e., corpse), and this she regarded as a certain presage of some fatal occurence. Truly the age of witches and warlocks was not yet passed.