the schoolmaster's. The fiend take me if I thought he had mortal mould
enough in him ever to go to sleep at all; though he is but a kind of
dream-stuff in his widest-awake state. Hannah, you bronze jade, call
the schoolmaster to come to breakfast."

Hannah departed on her errand, and was heard knocking at the door of
the schoolmaster's chamber several times, till the Doctor shouted to
her wrathfully to cease her clatter and open the door at once, which
she appeared to do, and speedily came back.

"He no there, massa. Schoolmaster melted away!"

"Vanished like a bubble!" quoth the Doctor.

"The great spider caught him like a fly," quoth crusty Hannah,
chuckling with a sense of mischief that seemed very pleasant to her
strange combination.

"He has taken a morning walk," said little Ned; "don't you think so,
Doctor Grim?"

"Yes," said the grim Doctor. "Go on with your breakfast, little monkey;
the walk may be a long one, or he is so slight a weight that the wind
may blow him overboard."

A very long walk it proved; or it might be that some wind, whether evil
or good, had blown him, as the Doctor suggested, into parts unknown;
for, from that time forth, the Yankee schoolmaster returned no more. It
was a singular disappearance.