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"But, my gud sir, they are ver' cheep." By this time the boys had arrived at the landing and still the persistent peddler gave them no rest. He was calling his wares and insisting upon an inspection of them, ignoring the protests of the boys. Finally in despair Fred reached beneath the seat and drew forth one of Sam's artificial legs.
It was a quarter to twelve on a Sunday morning and Jed was preparing his dinner. The piece de resistance of the dinner was, in this instance, to be a mackerel. Jed had bought the mackerel of the fish peddler the previous afternoon and it had been reposing on a plate in the little ancient ice-chest which stood by the back door of the Winslow kitchen.
"What a queer looking man," remarked the maid, as she stood at the window watching the movements of the one-eyed peddler and his dog team. "Queer indeed," murmured Rose. That evening Rose Alstine received a caller whom she little expected the woman she had seen in the summer-house in the arms of August Bordine. "Can I see you alone for a moment, Miss Alstine?" "Certainly."
But when the door was opened, brows cleared and anxious looks vanished; for the visitor was none other than the peddler of a few days back, who, contrary to custom, had paid a second visit to the village within a week of the first. "Good even, good folks," he said, stepping in with his heavy bags, which he deposited with a grunt upon the floor.
From the throat of the huge-shouldered peddler, not two paces away from him, he heard come a hoarse and brutish cry, a cry strangely like the bawl and groan of a branded range-cow. At the same moment the gigantic green-draped figure exploded into sudden activity. He seemed to catapult out at the stooping dapper figure, bearing it to the sidewalk with the sheer weight of his unprovoked assault.
It was the peddler who struck first, but Peter, being the stronger of the two, got his antagonist under him, and with a stick of wood which was lying upon the hearth struck him upon the head, inflicting a fearful wound from which the blood flowed in torrents, staining Peter's hands and face as he pushed back his hair, and sobered him at once.
He shook his head; he sat down in despair; he ran round in a circle; he dashed into the woods and back again. He did everything except climb a tree, and howl. It would have been such a relief to him if he could have howled. But that was the one thing he could not do. It is a wonder that every New England boy does not turn out a poet, or a missionary, or a peddler. Most of them used to.
"Hold!" roared the speculator; "you'll fire the house." "And see the farther," said the other, hurling the brand in the midst of the combustibles. In an instant the building was in flames. "Come on; let us move towards the heights while we have light to pick our road." "Villain!" cried the exasperated purchaser, "is this your friendship this my reward for kidnapping the peddler?"
She looks well enough, and her voice is pleasant, and I must say she has nice ways. She didn't make me feel like a peddler, as so many of them do. P'raps she'll come," admitted Miriam, grudgingly. "Oh, I hope so. I'd love to see her and her pretty clothes, even if she didn't buy anything."
"Yes," continued Philip, taking up the story where his mother had left off; "then he went to a 'fair, thatched inn, you know, and he sat drinking with the tinker, the peddler, and the beggar, when the two rich brothers from Fountains Abbey came out to start again on their journey to York.
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