it as the little minds of a little place ever hate those apart.

Occasionally, in the forest far back from the settlement, I caught a
flying glimpse of Lincoln green; and Hortense went through the woods,
hard as her Irish hunter could gallop, followed by the blackamoor,
churning up and down on a blowing nag. Once I had the good luck to
restore a dropped gauntlet before the blackamoor could come. With eyes
alight she threw me a flashing thanks and was off, a sunbeam through
the forest shades; and something was thumping under a velvet waistcoat
faster than the greyhound's pace. A moment later, back came the hound
in springy stretches, with the riders at full gallop.

Her whip fell, but this time she did not turn.

But when I carried the whip to the doctor's house that night, M. Picot
received it with scant grace!

Whispers--gall-midges among evil tongues--were raising a buzz that
boded ill for the doctor. France had paid spies among the English,
some said. Deliverance Dobbins, a frumpish, fizgig of a maid, ever
complaining of bodily ills though her chuffy cheeks were red as
pippins, reported that one day when she had gone for simples she had
seen strange, dead things in the jars of M. Picot's dispensary. At
this I laughed as Rebecca told it me, and old Tibbie winked behind the
little Puritan maid's head; for my father, like the princes, had known
that love of the new sciences which became a passion among gentlemen.
Had I not noticed the mole on the French doctor's cheek? Rebecca asked.
I had: what of it?

"The crops have been blighted," says Rebecca; though what connection