"I'll tell you what I was thinking about. I was once at the mountains, forty miles off, where there is a mineral spring. There is where ladies and gentlemen go to drink water, eat all manner of things at the tavern, and get well, when they never have been sick. Iron in the water at the springs! Bless you; it would not divide the nails in a horse-shoe in a month, to the whole army of the Revolution, if they had drunk of nothing else. Well our judge and the family followed the fashion. Fashion is a runaway horse that carries a great load of straw behind him, and sometimes he has after him things much better than straw. I drove up to bring them home. But the judge was taken sick just before I got there, and sent for our doctor here, to come up and cure him. In the night, after I got there, one of your uncommon Yankees, who seemed to be well off, and to do fifty things, from what I could gather, to make money, had a bad attack; unlike anything I ever heard of around here. He was awful bad. I heard the racket, and went into his room.

"'My friend,' says I, 'you do look awful bad'—for I always speak my honest sentiments, in a sick-room, or out of it. 'I thank you for your sympathy,' says he—and yet somehow it sounded as if he didn't. I presumed he didn't want any one to talk to him. 'Send[Pg 16] down for Dr. Norkin,' says the landlord. 'He is here;' this is what he said to the sick man. 'He lives forty miles off—at Overlook. But he is here, attending on Judge Almore—who has been ill.'

[Pg 16]

"The sick man, after a groan or two, raised himself up in his bed. It was as good as the best apple, to see how quickly he seemed to ungear his mind from his sick body. He gave a long thought. Then he said,

"'Did the judge send for that doctor, because he was in the house at the time when he was taken sick? Or did he send all the way to Overlook for him to come here to him?'

"'He sent for him to Overlook,' says the landlord, before I could put in a word.

"'Then I'll see him,' says he—speaking quickly out, and firm like, as if he was a king. Now wasn't that cute? I tell you such men think faster, and a great way before other people. Well; it's a free country, and all people aint bound to do their thinking alike."

We now came to the entrance of the lane, that led up to Overlook House.

Two large cherry trees stood on either side of the gate. I drew the attention of my companion to them. They were very venerable, and their 

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