that sort o' hung round it. Jest about half way through the woods
we met the English girl, a stridin' along alone, each step more'n
3 feet long, or so it seemed to me. There wuz a look of health,
and happy determination on her forwerd as she strided rapidly by.

I would have fain questioned her concernin' my pardner, as she
strode by, but before I could call out, or begon to her she wuz
far in the rearwerd, and goin' in a full pressure and in a knot of
several miles an hour.

Wall, from that minute I felt strange and curious. And though
Druzilla and Ezra was agreeable and the Deacon edifyin', I didn't
seem to feel edified, and the most warm-hearted looks didn't seem
to warm my heart none, it wuz oppressed with gloomy forebodings
of, Where wuz my pardner? They had laid out to set out together.
Had they sot? This question was a goverin' me, and the follerin'
one: If they had sot out together, where wuz my pardner, Josiah
Allen, now? As I thought these feerful thoughts, instinctively I
turned around to see if I could see a trace of his companion in
the distance. Yes, I could ketch a faint glimpse of her as she
wuz mountin' a diclivity, and stood for an instant in sight, but
long before even, she disopeered agin, for her gait wuz
tremendous, and at a rate of a good many knots she wuz a goin',
that I knew. And the fearful thought would rise, Josiah Allen
could not go more than half a knot, if he could that. He wuz a
slow predestinatur any way, and then his corns was feerful, and
never could be told -- and his boots had in 'em the elements of
feerful sufferin'. It wuz all he could do when he had 'em on to
hobble down to the spring, and post-office. Where? where wuz he?
And she a goin' at the rate of so many knots.