“Some say one thing--some another; but I think, neighbor, it was just here. That ere old man has been in harness these sixty years--it was a sort of second natur to him to be _active_. Well, he was taken right out of the whirl and hubbub of the city, where people can’t hardly stop long enough to bury one another, and sot right down in this quiet place, where there’s nothing a-going but frogs and crickets, with nothing to do but to brood over his troubles. Well, you see such a somerset at his time o’ life wan’t the thing; of course it upsot him. He’d lean over this fence, and lean over that, and put on his hat, and take it off, and walk a bit, and sit down a bit, and act just like an old rat in a trap, trying to gnaw his way out. It was just as if you should pull up that old oak-tree, that has grown in that spot till its roots strike out half a mile round, and set it out in some foreign sile; it wouldn’t thrive--of course not.” “No,” said Mr. Pike, “I see, I see--it would be just so with me, if I was set down where _he_ came from--that etarnal rumbling and whiz buzz would drive me clean distracted. The last time I staid in the city over night, I thought every minute the last day had come, there was such a tearin’ round. But what’s become of the old woman and her sick darter?” “_She_ took it hard--she did--but the girl is sort of image-like--don’t feel nothing, I reckon. Pretty, too--it’s a nation pity. They’ve got enough left to keep them alive, milk and fresh air, like the rest on us. _I_ don’t want no better fare. There’s some talk, so my old woman says, about a fellow who drives out here, who is going to marry the girl;--nothing but woman’s gabble, I guess; you know if they didn’t talk they wouldn’t say nothing.” “Fact,” said Mr. Pike, profoundly, “I often think on’t; but come, I can’t stay prating here all day--where’s the pitchfork you was going to lend me?” “There it is,” said Mr. Rice; “and now remember what I told you about that boy of yourn; there’s more good in that Zekiel, than you think for;--remember now, a little oil makes machinery work easy, Pike.” “Yes, oil of birch,” said farmer Pike, chuckling at his own wit, and cracking his horse-whip at a happy little vagrant robin, as he went through the gate and down the road. CHAPTER IX.