How Enoch Pillsbury, the “‘pottecary, like t’ ha’ killed” Old Man Grout, sending him writing fluid instead of the dark mixture for his “dyspepsy.”

How Beulah Perkins, who lived over the dry-goods store, had been bedridden for nineteen years, till the house where she was living caught fire, “whereupon she jumped out o’ bed an’ grabbed an umbrella an’ opened it, an’ ran down street in her red-flannel gownd, with the umbrella over her head, shoutin’, ’Somebody go save my bedstid!  I ain’t stirred from it for nineteen years, an’ I ain’t never goin’ to stir from it agin.  Somebody go save my bedstid!’”

“And was it saved?” asked Hilda, laughing.

“No,” said the farmer; “‘t wa’n’t wuth savin’, nohow.  Besides, if’t hed been, she’d ha’ gone back to it an’ stayed there.  Hosy Grout, who did her chores, kicked it into the fire; an’ she was a well woman to the day of her death.”

Now the houses straggled farther and farther apart, and at last the village was fairly left behind.  Old Nancy pricked up her ears and quickened her pace a little, looking right and left with glances of pleasure as the familiar fields ranged themselves along either side of the road.  Hilda too was glad to be in the free country again, and she looked with delight at the banks of fern, the stone walls covered with white starry clematis, and the tangle of blackberry vines which made the pleasant road so fragrant and sweet.  She was silent for some time.  At last she said, half timidly, “Farmer Hartley, you promised to tell me more about your father some day.  Don’t you think this would be a good time?  I have been so much interested by what I have heard of him.”

“That’s curus, now,” said Farmer Hartley slowly, flicking the dust with the long lash of his whip.  “It’s curus, Huldy, that you sh’d mention Father jest now, ‘cause I happened to be thinkin’ of him myself that very minute.  Old Father,” he added meditatively, “wal, surely, he was a character, Father was.  Folks about here,” he said, turning suddenly to Hilda and looking keenly at her, “think Father was ravin’ crazy, or mighty nigh it.  But he warn’t nothin’ o’ the sort.  His mind was as keen as a razor, an’ as straight-edged, ’xcept jest on one subject.  On that he was, so to say, a little—­wal—­a little tetched.”

“And that was—?” queried Hilda.

“Why, ye see, Huldy, Father had been a sea-farin’ man all his days, an’ he’d seen all manner o’ countries an’ all manner o’ folks; and ’tain’t to be wondered at ef he got a leetle bit confoosed sometimes between the things he’d seen and the things he owned.  Long’n short of it was, Father thought he hed a kind o’ treasure hid away somewhar, like them pirate fellers used to hev.  Ef they did hev it!” he added slowly.  “I never more’n half believed none o’ them yarns; but Father, he thought he hed it, an’ no mistake.  ‘D’ye think I was five years coastin’