gigantic tree, struck with a sort of leprosy, like all its species, appears much older, and of course has its tradition.  They say that it grew from a green stake which the first land-surveyor planted there for one of his points of sight.  John was reminded of it years after when he sat under the shade of the decrepit lime-tree in Freiburg and was told that it was originally a twig which the breathless and bloody messenger carried in his hand when he dropped exhausted in the square with the word “Victory!” on his lips, announcing thus the result of the glorious battle of Morat, where the Swiss in 1476 defeated Charles the Bold.  Under the broad but scanty shade of the great button-ball tree (as it was called) stood an old watering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock and well-worn spout pouring forever cold, sparkling water into the overflowing trough.  It is fed by a spring near by, and the water is sweeter and colder than any in the known world, unless it be the well Zem-zem, as generations of people and horses which have drunk of it would testify, if they could come back.  And if they could file along this road again, what a procession there would be riding down the valley!—­antiquated vehicles, rusty wagons adorned with the invariable buffalo-robe even in the hottest days, lean and long-favored horses, frisky colts, drawing, generation after generation, the sober and pious saints, that passed this way to meeting and to mill.

What a refreshment is that water-spout!  All day long there are pilgrims to it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them.  Here comes a gray horse drawing a buggy with two men,—­cattle buyers, probably.  Out jumps a man, down goes the check-rein.  What a good draught the nag takes!  Here comes a long-stepping trotter in a sulky; man in a brown linen coat and wide-awake hat,—­dissolute, horsey-looking man.  They turn up, of course.  Ah, there is an establishment he knows well:  a sorrel horse and an old chaise.  The sorrel horse scents the water afar off, and begins to turn up long before he reaches the trough, thrusting out his nose in anticipation of the coot sensation.  No check to let down; he plunges his nose in nearly to his eyes in his haste to get at it.  Two maiden ladies —­unmistakably such, though they appear neither “anxious nor aimless” —­within the scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrel back.  It is the deacon’s horse, a meeting-going nag, with a sedate, leisurely jog as he goes; and these are two of the “salt of the earth,”—­the brevet rank of the women who stand and wait,—­going down to the village store to dicker.  There come two men in a hurry, horse driven up smartly and pulled up short; but as it is rising ground, and the horse does not easily reach the water with the wagon pulling back, the nervous man in the buggy hitches forward on his seat, as if that would carry the wagon a little ahead!  Next, lumber-wagon with load of boards; horse wants to turn up, and driver switches him and