"It goes middling well, but already I weary me of my bargain."

"Are you then in trade, Miss Desire?"

"A little. Papa said if I would not tease him to let me go to New York
this winter, he would have me a piano. I know not what came over me
that I consented. I shall go into a decline ere spring. The ugly dress
and the cowlike faces of the people, make me sick at heart, and give
me bad dreams, and the horses neigh in better English than the farmers
talk. Alack, 'tis a dreary place for a damsel! But, no doubt, I have
interrupted some weighty discussion. I bid you good even, Sir," and,
once more curtsying, the girl went up the path to the house, much to
her uncle Jahleel's relief, who had no taste for badinage, and wanted
to get on to the store, whither, presently he was on his way, while
Sedgwick's carriage rolled off toward Boston.

About a mile out of Stockbridge, the carriage passed two men standing
by the roadside, earnestly talking. These men were Perez Hamlin and
Abner Rathbun.

"You remember the Ice-hole," said Perez, referring to an extraordinary
cleft or chasm, of great depth, and extremely difficult and perilous
of access, situated near the top of Little Mountain, a short distance
from Stockbridge.

"Yes," said Abner, "I rekullec it, well. I guess you an I, Perez, air
abaout the on'y fellers in taown, ez hev been clean through it."

"My plan is this," said Perez. "Kidnap Deacon Nash, carry him up to
the Ice-hole, and keep him there till he makes out a release for Reub,