This was of course profound hypocrisy; but "gorming" meant some bad quality, and any might be safely predicated of our huckleberry pair. Who will admit that he does not know all that is to be known in horse-matters? We therefore asked no questions, but waited patiently for information. Delay pays demurrage to the wisely patient. Coachee relapsed into the sulks. The driving rain resolved itself into a dim chaos of mist. Xanthus and Balius plodded on, but often paused and gasped, or, turning their heads as if they missed something, strayed from the track and drew us against the dripping bushes. After one such excursion, which had nearly been the ruin of us, and which by calling out coachee's scourging powers had put him thoroughly in good-humor, he turned to us and said, superlatively,-- "Them's the gormingest hosses I ever see. When I drew 'em in the four-hoss coach for wheelers, they could keep a straight tail. Now they act like they was drunk. They's gorming,--_they won't do nothin' without a leader_." To gorm, then, is to err when there is no leader. Alas, how mankind gorms! By sunless noon we were well among the mountains. We came to the last New-Hampshire house, miles from its neighbors. But it was a self-sufficing house, an epitome of humanity. Grandmamma, bald under her cap, was seated by the stove dandling grandchild, bald under its cap. Each was highly entertained with the other. Grandpapa was sandy with grandboy's gingerbread-crumbs. The intervening ages were well represented by wiry men and shrill women. The house, also, without being tavern or shop, was an amateur bazaar of _vivers_ and goods. Anything one was likely to want could be had there,--even a melodeon and those inevitable Patent-Office Reports. Here we descended, lunched, and providently bought a general assortment, namely, a large plain cake, five pounds of cheese, a ball of twine, and two pairs of brown ribbed woollen socks, native manufacture. My pair of these indestructibles will outlast my last legs and go as an heirloom after me. The weather now, as we drove on, seemed to think that Iglesias deserved better of it. Rain-globes strung upon branches, each globe the possible home of a sparkle, had waited long enough unillumined. Sunlight suddenly discovered this desponding patience and rewarded it. Every drop selected its own ray from the liberal bundle, and, crowding itself full of radiance, became a mirror of sky and cloud and forest. Also, by the searching sunbeams' store of regal purple, ripe raspberries were betrayed. On these, magnified by their convex lenses of water, we pounced. Showers shook playfully upon us from the vines, while we revelled in fruitiness. We ran before our gormers, they gormed by us while we plucked, we ran by, plucked again, and again were gormingly overtaken and overtook. Thus we ate our way luxuriously through the Dixville Notch, a capital cleft in a northern spur of the White Mountains.