But on a solemn promise from Jimmy's Uncle Will that he would personally convey me home, behind one of his own horses, at least twenty-four hours before the great event, I thought it might be safe to risk it. Jimmy could stay at the farm (fully two miles away) until the very morning, if he liked. I preferred to be nearer at hand. So to the farm I went. Certainly, no other place would have tempted me. It was, to our fancies, perhaps the most fortunate spot on earth. Historians and antiquaries might deny that it had been the scene of a proper Indian raid. _We_ could see the loopholes from which the flintlocks had been fired, and mark the small window whence a dipperful of molten lead was poured, to discourage an Indian whose anxiety to come inside the house made him indiscreet. I have never heard any of the slaves to fact assert that the farm-house might not have seen the tomahawk flashing about its walls and heard the war-whoop ring out. It was there in the days of tomahawks and war-whoops. If the Indians had been so inconsiderate as to pass it by, we were not going to let that trouble us. Certainly, a plough seldom turned the earth of the adjoining meadow without bringing to light a flint arrow-tip or the head of a stone axe--weapons which even the scientific historian might hesitate to attribute to the ministers and deacons of Puritan times. There was the meadow itself, an enormous tract of land, as it appeared to us. In it, somewhere, dwelt the lord of the herd, a legendary bull whose uncertain temper might be aroused by the sight of a small boy wearing a plaid necktie with a single spot of red in it. He could detect this spot at half a mile, and the boy had better make for the nearest fence, and affect blue neckties exclusively henceforth. Thus the crossing of the meadow had that spice of danger without which life is tasteless. There were other reasons for crossing the meadow besides the mere braving of the bull. At its foot was a pond, rich in mud of primeval blackness, and well stocked with turtles and "green-leapers." Farther on was a bog and wood, deep and gloomy as the magic forest of Broceliande, and not less pleasing to us because it went by the more homely name of Pettingell's Swamp. Crows built their nests in its trees, and without its borders jack-in-the-pulpit held his springtime services. Beyond this, more meadows--salt ones this time; then the river, the sand-dunes, and the ocean.