Perhaps at the time when this writing may reach the press, such a contrivance may have become antiquated; and therefore I had better add to my description, that a weighty chain passed through iron rings, to secure the opening; and finally, there was the brass padlock, at which the Indian gazed with such contempt, when he said, "Brass lock upon leather! that makes my knife laugh." I stepped from the heavy stage-sleigh into the one sent for me by Judge Almore, and it was like passing from a heavy craft on the waters, into one of lesser make, and lighter burden. John Frake, the farmer at Overlook Manor, had driven over for me. His horses seemed exhilarated by the bells, and we dashed forward in splendid style. John Frake was a character; a real man in energy, work, and talk; frank, and good-hearted.
As we drove along, in a loud voice, that permitted not a word to be lost by the melody of the bells, he made his comments upon all things, and especially on the inhabitants along the streets of the village.
"Dr. Norkin lives there," he said, pointing with his whip to a comfortable house. And then as if pondering the beginning of a long train of thought, he added,
"Those Yankees are unaccountable smart people."
"The doctor is a Yankee, then?"
"Oh no! there aint enough Yankee in him to make a spot on the map of Massachusetts. Not but that the doctor has lots of common sense, and keeps all that he has got ready for use, when wanted, as ready as my plough to go through the ground. But those Yankees have the most uncommon ways of putting things together; just as if you took something out of the middle of the earth, and made it fit something on the top of a mountain."
"Yes, but I don't see what Yankees have to do with the doctor."
"I'll tell you what I was thinking about. I was once at the mountains, forty miles off, where there is a mineral spring. There is where ladies and gentlemen go to drink water, eat all manner of things at the tavern, and get well, when they never have been sick. Iron in the water at the springs! Bless you; it would not divide the nails in a horse-shoe in a month, to the whole army of the Revolution, if they had drunk of nothing else. Well our judge and the family followed the fashion. Fashion is a runaway horse that carries a great load of straw behind him, and sometimes he has after him things much better than straw. I drove up to bring them home. But the judge was taken sick just before I got there, and sent for our doctor here, to come up and cure him. In the night, after I got there, one of your uncommon Yankees, who seemed to be well off, and to do fifty things, from what I could gather, to make money, had a bad attack; unlike anything I ever heard of around here. He was awful bad. I heard the racket, and went into his room.
"'My friend,' says I, 'you do look awful bad'—for I always speak my honest sentiments, in a sick-room, or out of it. 'I thank you for your sympathy,' says he—and yet somehow it sounded as if he didn't. I presumed he didn't want any one to talk to him. 'Send down for Dr. Norkin,' says the landlord. 'He is here;' this is what he said to the sick man. 'He lives forty miles off—at Overlook. But he is here, attending on Judge Almore—who has been ill.'
"The sick man, after a groan or two, raised himself up in his bed. It was as good as the best apple, to see how quickly he seemed to ungear his mind from his sick body. He gave a long thought. Then he said,