Tommy Trembly was a pioneer of his craft. He used to wander from Boston up and down the towns on the Charles River, and into the Indian towns of Natick, Punkapoag and Magunkaquog, or “the place of great trees,” as Hopkinton was once called. Other tinkers wandered up the valley of the Merrimac. Nearly every village had an “ordinary,” or eating-house. This place was sometimes more a drinking-house than an eating-house. Most of the disorderly conduct of those generally well-conducted days began in the mugs of these old taverns. There were some twelve hundred Praying Indians, as the Christian Indians were called, in the villages near Boston at this time. These had been converted to Christianity through the efforts of John Eliot, the Indian apostle, who translated the Bible into the Indian tongue. The principal seat of the Praying Indians was at Natick, and Waban was their principal leader, governor, counsellor, and judge. There was an ordinary near the borders of Lake Cochituate, not far from the Indian village, kept by one “Indian Pendergast” and his wife, which acquired a bad reputation from the brawls that had occurred there over the drinking-cups. Squaw Pendergast, as the hostess was called, was a sharp-eyed, money-loving Indian woman, who could speak English well; and it was her passion to secure as many pence and shillings as possible from every guest who came. “’Tis the bar that makes the money, I tell you; ’tis the bar that makes the money. Slap!” she used to say, striking her hand on her long, jingling jacket. “Yes,” once answered a grave old Indian deacon; “and it is the bar that loses the money at last, and good name and soul and all, as you will see, Squaw Pendergast. Ale money um heap poor!” One early autumn day Tommy Trembly wandered away from Boston along the Charles River, through little settlements and past the farms, crying, when he saw a habitation, “Old brass to mend? Old brass to mend?” The next afternoon found him at Natick. He had mended many pots and kettles by the way. The heats of early autumn were cooling now; the apples were reddening on the trees. There were thistle-downs on the roads and byways, and the graceful leaves of the sassafras were turning yellow. Approaching Natick, Tommy ceased to cry, “Old brass to mend?” He had earned much money by the way, and his only thought now was of the ordinary, and of Squaw Pendergast’s hard cider and foaming mugs of ale. Here and there a farmer called to him to stop, but he did not heed. “Here, stop, stop! Kettles, kettles!” shouted one goodwife; but Tommy did not even turn his head in response. “Stop that wild tinker; kettles, kettles!” she cried to her hired man. “Kettles, kettles!” shouted the man, swinging his corn-knife; but on flew Tommy, unheeding.