Throwing on a few clothes, we rushed downstairs. The hotel keeper and his hostler were already out with buckets of water, but could do little. The load was ablaze, and those dry, pitchy witches' brooms flamed up tremendously. Fortunately, the wind carried the flame and sparks away from the tavern and barns, or the whole establishment might have burned down. The crackling was terrific; the firs as well as the witches' brooms burned. Great gusts of flame and vapor rose, writhing and twisting in the wind. Any one might have imagined them to be witches of the olden time, riding wildly away up toward the half-obscured moon!
So great was the heat that it proved impossible to save the rack and sleds, or even the near-by garden fence, which had caught fire.
That disaster ended the trip. It was now too near Christmas Day to get more large firs, to say nothing of witches' brooms; and we were obliged to send word to this effect to our Portland patrons. The next morning Addison and I rode home on old Jim and Buckskin, with their harness tied up in a bundle before us. The wind was piercing and bleak; we were both so chilled as to be ill of a cold for several days afterward. The story that we had to tell at home was far from being an inspiriting one. Not only had we lost our load, traverse sleds and rack, but in due time we had a bill of ten dollars to pay the hotel keeper for his garden fence.
We always supposed that those drunken ruffians touched off our load just before driving away; but of course it may have been a spark from the chimney.
That was our first and last experience with witches' brooms.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE LITTLE IMAGE PEDDLERS
I think it was the following Friday afternoon that a curious diversion occurred at the schoolhouse, just as the school was dismissed. Coming slowly along the white highway two small boys were espied, each carrying on his head a raft-like platform laden with plaster-of-Paris images. They were dark-complexioned little fellows, not more than twelve or thirteen years old; and were having difficulty to keep their feet and stagger along with their preposterous burdens.
The plaster casts comprised images of saints, elephants, giraffes, cherubs with little wings tinted in pink and yellow, a tall Madonna and Child, a bust of George Washington, a Napoleon, a grinning Voltaire, an angel with a pink trumpet and an evil-looking Tom Paine.