"I never forgot you, sir; but ever since my illness you seem to have been a part of the dread river and its dead. I have often tried to restore you as I once thought of you, but other things rise up and I cannot see you. My head was gone, I suppose." "Alas, no! I drove away your heart. If that would come back, the wandering head would follow, little friend. Are you afraid of me?" "Sometimes. One thing, I think, is your deafness. While you were deaf you seemed so natural that we talked freely before you, prattling out our fancies undisguised. We wouldn't have done it if we knew that you heard as well as we. That makes me afraid too. Oh! why did you deceive us so?" "I only deceived myself. A foolish habit, formed in pique, of affecting not to hear, adhered to me long before we were acquainted. If you will let me drive you out into the country to-morrow I will tell you the whole of my silly story. The country roads are what you need, and I need your consideration as much." The next day a buggy stopped at the door, and Podge, sitting at the window with her bonnet on, saw Duff Salter, hale and strong, holding the reins. She was helped into the buggy by Andrew Zane, and in a few minutes the two were in the open country pointing toward old Frankford. They rode up the long stony street of that old village, whose stone or rough-cast houses suggested the Swiss city of Basle whence the early settlers of Frankford came. Then turning through the factory dale called Little Britain, they sped out the lane, taking the general direction of Tacony Creek, and followed that creek up through different little villages and mill-seats until they came to nearly the highest mill-pond, in the stony region about the Old York road. A house of gray and reddish stones, in irregular forms, mortised in white plaster, sat broadside to the lawn before it, which was covered with venerable trees, and bordered at the roadside by a stone rampart, so that it looked like a hanging lawn. A gate at the lawn-side gave admission to a lane, behind which was the ancient mill-pond suspended in a dewy landscape, with a path in the grass leading up the mill-race, and on the pond a little scow floated in pond-lilies. All around were chestnut trees, their burrs full of fruit. Across the lane, only a few feet from the house, the ancient mill gave forth a snoring and drumming together as if the spirit of solitude was having a dance all to itself and only breathing hard. Then the crystal water, shooting the old black mill-wheel, fell off it like the beard from Duff Salter's face, and went away in pools and flakes across a meadow, under spontaneous willow trees which liked to stand in moisture and cover with their roots the harmless water-snakes. A few cottages peeped over the adjacent ridges upon the hidden dale.