It did me good to see Herrick's cheery face on the platform, and to
feel the hand-grip he gave me. Our friendship dated back to college
days, and unlike so many of those early intimacies, it had
strengthened instead of decreased with the passage of time. Then, as
now, Herrick had been the same curious mixture of enthusiast and
practical hard-headed worker, and in spite of the inevitable
schooling of experience and years of exacting and often discouraging
labour, he had carried into the early forties a certain boyish
confidence, a freshness of outlook, which gave to one instinctively,
on meeting him, the impression of indomitable health and vitality.
When we had tucked his valise into the back of the buggy and turned
the mare about, he looked at me with a laugh.
"Well, Haverill, you look quite the country practitioner already!
Seven weeks' change--ye gods! But you haven't grown a beard yet!"
"I'm keeping the beard for my leisure moments," I told him. "So far
they haven't been many."
"Don't tell me this place is in the throes of an epidemic! It looks
like one of those ideal Sleepy Hollows where you get about one call
for whooping-cough every six months. I came here for repose, you
know."
"Oh, you'll get it," I assured him. "You'll get the kind of repose
that keeps you awake nights wondering where it's going to hit you
next. They don't want a doctor down here; they want a new lunacy
commission officer, and the first suspect will be me. Oh, I'm going
to make you work, Jack! Have no idle dreams on the subject."
"Work! You look as if you'd forgotten the meaning of the word! If
ever a man had the luck to stumble on a good excuse for a holiday
it's you. This air, this sky, these woods to fish and loaf in----
Hello, what's up? The whooping-cough I spoke of, or have you
arranged a little semblance of business for my benefit! That good
lady seems about to welcome us with open arms."
A woman was hurrying down the road toward us, from the direction of
my house. She had a gingham sunbonnet on which flapped at each step
as she walked, and on catching sight of the buggy with the familiar
roan mare in the shafts she waved her hand in unmistakable signal. I
pulled Bess up, and by the time the woman came pantingly abreast of
us I recognized her for Mrs. Sliefer, who lived in the first
farm-house beyond the Bend, past the cross roads.
"I been to your house, doctor," she began, "an' Mis' Searle told me
you weren't to hum, so I come right on. My niece is took bad an'
she's been queer sence the mornin', and I'd like you to come straight
back with me an' see her."
She spoke with an air somewhat of indignation, born of her toilsome
walk. Mrs. Sliefer was a stout lady, to put it at the mildest, and
the heat and exercise had obviously tried her. I leaned from the
buggy.
"Get right up, Mrs. Sliefer! There's plenty of room, and you can
tell me as we drive."
She hoisted herself laboriously into the buggy, with our combined
help, and collapsed, rather than sat down, between us. Luckily the
seat was a broad one. As it was, her generous proportions all but
crushed us.
I kept the mare at a walk while Mrs. Sliefer told her errand.
Briefly, as I gathered from her rather spasmodic utterance, the facts
were these.
Her niece, Rebecca Durn, who lived with Mr. and Mrs. Sliefer at the
farm, was keeping company with the young man from Haskell's grocery
store. The young couple were in the habit of meeting of an evening,
after Rebecca had washed her supper dishes, in the woods near the
sawmill, some fifteen minutes from the farm-house and in the line of
the short cut which the young man used to walk up from the village.
They usually took a short stroll about the dam before returning to
the farm, to finish the evening in the older folks' company on the
home porch. Yesterday, as I have said, was rainy, and Rebecca had
expected her sweetheart at the house. As he did not arrive, however,
and the weather had lifted since five o'clock, Rebecca, thinking he
might possibly have gone to the usual trysting-place, put on a shawl
and her rubber shoes and went out to find him. He was not to seen,
and she loitered a few moments in the neighborhood of the dam before
returning home. It was then just getting dusk. According to her
account, she was strolling near the saw-mill when the ghost of Jakey
Menning, surrounded by light and with flames coming from his mouth,
sprang out from the bushes and yelled at her. Rebecca, struck of a
heap, as she expressed it, had still the sense to turn and run, and
being a sturdy young woman she speedily outdistanced the alleged
ghost and gained the shelter of her own home. Once on the porch,
however, she collapsed in hysterics, and it was not until she came
to, a good half-hour after, that her aunt and uncle could learn what
had happened. Rebecca's sweetheart had meantime arrived, and being a
strong-minded young man had at once induced Mr. Sliefer to set out
with him, armed with a stout cudgel and the farmer's shotgun, to
investigate. They patrolled the neighborhood of the saw-mill
thoroughly, but needless to say nothing was found.
Rebecca recovered, but this morning, on the matter being mentioned at
breakfast, had promptly gone off again into hysterics, a state which
had lasted all day, off and on, and which her aunt had been unable to
check. The hysteria had brought on sickness, and the girl, so Mrs.
Sliefer told me, was now in bed in a state of utter collapse.