A Country Doctor | Page 6

'T
was that time Dan'l broke his leg, you know; they was takin' a deck
load of oak knees down by the packet, and one on 'em rolled down
from the top of the pile and struck him just below the knee. He was
poling, for there wan't a breath o' wind, and he always felt certain there
was somethin' mysterious about it. He'd had a good deal worse knocks
than that seemed to be, as only left a black and blue spot, and he said he
never see a deck load o' timber piled securer. He had some queer
notions about the doin's o' sperits, Dan'l had; his old Aunt Parser was to
blame for it. She lived with his father's folks, and used to fill him and
the rest o' the child'n with all sorts o' ghost stories and stuff. I used to
tell him she'd a' be'n hung for a witch if she'd lived in them old Salem
days. He always used to be tellin' what everything was the sign of,
when we was first married, till I laughed him out of it. It made me kind
of notional. There's too much now we can't make sense of without
addin' to it out o' our own heads."
Mrs. Jake and Mrs. Martin were quite familiar with the story of the
night when there were no candles and Mr. Thacher had broken his leg,
having been present themselves early in the morning afterward, but
they had listened with none the less interest. These country neighbors
knew their friends' affairs as well as they did their own, but such an
audience is never impatient. The repetitions of the best stories are

signal events, for ordinary circumstances do not inspire them. Affairs
must rise to a certain level before a narration of some great crisis is
suggested, and exactly as a city audience is well contented with hearing
the plays of Shakespeare over and over again, so each man and woman
of experience is permitted to deploy their well-known but always
interesting stories upon the rustic stage.
"I must say I can't a-bear to hear anything about ghosts after sundown,"
observed Mrs. Jake, who was at times somewhat troubled by what she
and her friends designated as "narves." "Day-times I don't believe in
'em 'less it's something creepy more'n common, but after dark it scares
me to pieces. I do' know but I shall be afeared to go home," and she
laughed uneasily. "There! when I get through with this needle I believe
I won't knit no more. The back o' my neck is all numb."
"Don't talk o' goin' home yet awhile," said the hostess, looking up
quickly as if she hated the thought of being left alone again. "'T is just
on the edge of the evenin'; the nights is so long now we think it's
bedtime half an hour after we've got lit up. 'T was a good lift havin' you
step over to-night. I was really a-dreadin' to set here by myself," and for
some minutes nobody spoke and the needles clicked faster than ever.
Suddenly there was a strange sound outside the door, and they stared at
each other in terror and held their breath, but nobody stirred. This was
no familiar footstep; presently they heard a strange little cry, and still
they feared to look, or to know what was waiting outside. Then Mrs.
Thacher took a candle in her hand, and, still hesitating, asked once,
"Who is there?" and, hearing no answer, slowly opened the door.

III
AT JAKE AND MARTIN'S
In the mean time, the evening had been much enjoyed by the brothers
who were spending it together in Martin Dyer's kitchen. The houses
stood side by side, but Mr. Jacob Dyer's youngest daughter, the only
one now left at home, was receiving a visit from her lover, or, as the

family expressed it, the young man who was keeping company with her,
and her father, mindful of his own youth, had kindly withdrawn.
Martin's children were already established in homes of their own, with
the exception of one daughter who was at work in one of the cotton
factories at Lowell in company with several of her acquaintances. It has
already been said that Jake and Martin liked nobody's company so well
as their own. Their wives had a time-honored joke about being
comparatively unnecessary to their respective partners, and indeed the
two men had a curiously dependent feeling toward each other. It was
the close sympathy which twins sometimes have each to each, and had
become a byword among all their acquaintances. They were seldom
individualized in any way, and neither was able to distinguish himself,
apparently, for one always heard of the family as Jake and Martin's
folks, and of