In the meantime the distant thunder gave notice of a shower at hand, and just as we reached Polley’s tavern the rain poured down in torrents.  It was soon over, the cloud passing in the direction of the turnpike toward Providence.  In a few moments after, a respectable-looking man in a chaise stopped at the door.  The man and child in the chair having excited some little sympathy among the passengers, the gentleman was asked if he had observed them.  He said he had met them; that the man seemed bewildered, and inquired the way to Boston; that he was driving at great speed, as though he expected to outstrip the tempest; that the moment he had passed him a thunderclap broke distinctly over the man’s head and seemed to envelop both man and child, horse and carriage.  “I stopped,” said the gentleman, “supposing the lightning had struck him, but the horse only seemed to loom up and increase his speed, and, as well as I could judge, he travelled just as fast as the thunder cloud.”  While this man was speaking, a peddler with a cart of tin merchandise came up, all dripping; and, on being questioned, he said he had met that man and carriage, within a fortnight, in four different States; that at each time he had inquired the way to Boston; and that a thunder shower like the present had each time deluged him, his wagon and his wares, setting his tin pots, etc., afloat, so that he had determined to get marine insurance done for the future.  But that which excited his surprise most was the strange conduct of his horse, for that, long before he could distinguish the man in the chair, his own horse stood still in the road and flung back his ears.  “In short,” said the peddler, “I wish never to see that man and horse again; they do not look to me as if they belonged to this world.”

This is all that I could learn at that time; and the occurrence soon after would have become with me like one of those things which had never happened, had I not, as I stood recently on the doorstep of Bennett’s Hotel in Hartford, heard a man say, “There goes Peter Rugg and his child! he looks wet and weary, and farther from Boston than ever.”  I was satisfied it was the same man that I had seen more than three years before; for whoever has once seen Peter Rugg can never after be deceived as to his identity.  “Peter Rugg!” said I, “and who is Peter Rugg?” “That,” said the stranger, “is more than anyone can tell exactly.  He is a famous traveller, held in light esteem by all inn-holders, for he never stops to eat, drink, or sleep.  I wonder why the Government does not employ him to carry the mail.”  “Ay,” said a bystander, “that is a thought bright only on one side.  How long would it take, in that case, to send a letter to Boston?  For Peter has already, to my knowledge, been more than twenty years travelling to that place.”  “But,” said I, “does the man never stop anywhere, does he never converse with anyone?  I saw the same man more than three years since, near Providence,