"Well," said he, "you know there was a raid in '53, when both sides gi'n up an' run. A crazed creatur on a white horse galloped up an' dispersed 'em. He was all wropped up in a sheet, and carried a jack-o'-lantern on a pole over his head, so 't he seemed more'n nine feet high. The settlers thought 't was a spirit; an' as for the Injuns, Lord knows what 't was to them. 'T any rate, the raid was over."
"Heaven be praised!" cried the doctor fervently. "Allah is great, and you, Mr. Oldfield, are his prophet. Stay here and coach the parson while I start up the town."
The doctor dashed home and mounted his horse. It was said that he did some tall riding that day. From door to door he galloped, a lesser Paul Revere, but sowing seeds of harmony. It was true that the soil was ready. Indians in full costume were lurking down cellar or behind kitchen doors, swearing they would never ride, but tremblingly eager to be urged. Settlers, gloomily acquiescent in an unjust fate, brightened at his heralding. The ghost was the thing. It took the popular fancy; and everybody wondered, as after all illuminings of genius, why nobody had thought of it before. Brad Freeman was unanimously elected to act the part, as the only living man likely to manage a supplementary head without rehearsal; and Pillsbury's white colt was hastily groomed for the onslaught. Brad had at once seen the possibilities of the situation and decided, with an unerring certainty, that as a jack-o'-lantern is naught by day, the pumpkin face must be cunningly veiled. He was a busy man that morning; for he not only had to arrange his own ghostly progress, but settle the elephant on its platform, to be dragged by vine-wreathed oxen, and also, at the doctor's instigation, to make the sledge on which the first Nicholas Oldfield should draw his wife into town. The doctor sought out Young Nick, and asked him to undertake the part, as tribute to his illustrious name; but he was of a prudent nature and declined. What if the town should laugh! "I guess I won't," said he.
But Mary, regardless of maternal cacklings, sped after the doctor as he turned his horse.
"O doctor!" she besought, "let me be the first settler's wife! Please, please let me be Mary Oldfield!"
The doctor was glad enough. All the tides of destiny were surging his way. Even when he paused, in his progress, to pull the Crane boy's tooth, it seemed to work out public harmony. For the victim, cannily anxious to prove his valor, insisted on having the operation conducted before the front window; and after it was accomplished, the squads of boys waiting at the gate for his apotheosis or down-fall, gave an unwilling yet delighted yell. He had not winced; and when, with the fire of a dear ambition still shining in his eyes, he held up the tooth to them, through the glass, they realized that he, and he only, could with justice take the crown of that most glorious day. He must ride inside the elephant.
So it came to pass that when the procession wound slowly up from the cross-road, preceded by the elephant, lifting his trunk at rhythmic intervals, Nicholas Oldfield saw his little Mary, her eyes shining and her cheeks aglow, sitting proudly upon a sledge, drawn by the handsomest young man in town. A pang may have struck the old man's heart, realizing that Phil Marden was so splendid in his strength, and that he wore so sweet a look of invitation; but he remembered Mary's vow and was content. A great pride and peace enwrapped him when the procession halted at the Flat-Iron Lot, and the minister, lifting up his voice, explained to the townspeople why they were called upon to pause. The name of Oldfield sounded clearly on the air.
"Now," said the minister, "let us pray." The petition went forth, and Mr. Oldfield stood brooding there, his thoughts running back through a long chain of ancestry to the Almighty, Who is the fount of all.
When heads were covered again, and this little world began to surge into the church, young Nick's Hattie moved closer to her husband and shot out a sibilant whisper:—
"Did you know that?—about the Flat-Iron Lot?"