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Blair, in the voice of one who speaks perforce after long sufferance, "I'd ha' died in my tracks afore I'd left my comfortable home down in Tiverton Holler. Story-'n'-a-half house, a good sullar, an' woods nigh-by full o' sarsaparilla an' goldthread! I've moved more times in this God-forsaken place than a Methodist preacher, fust one room an' then another; an' bad is the best.

What if you should clap on your bunnit an' ride along to the street?" She spoke cordially, judging that on such a spring day everybody was better out of the woods and upon the highway. "No," said Ann. "I got too much to do. I'm goin' into the pines arter some goldthread an' sarsaparil'. 'Most time for spring bitters. But I'm obleeged to ye for takin' the jug."

Catherine took many long jaunts to gather her herbs thoroughwort, goldthread, catnip, comfrey, skullcap, pennyroyal, lobelia, peppermint, old-man's-root, snakehead and others of greater or less medicinal value. She soon came to know where all those various wild plants grew for miles round.

"Sassafras, that makes tea for skin disease; Ginseng, that's good to sell; Bloodroot for the blood in springtime; Goldthread, that cures sore mouths; Pipsissewa for chills and fever; White-man's Foot, that springs up wherever a White-man treads; Indian cup, that grows where an Indian dies; Dandelion roots for coffee; Catnip tea for a cold; Lavender tea for drinking at meals; Injun Tobacco to mix with boughten tobacco; Hemlock bark to dye pink; Goldthread to dye yellow, and Butternut rinds for greenish."

"Thayer's Goldthread fur cankermouth, an' Pipsissewa that cures fayver an' rheumatiz, too. It always grows where folks gits them disayses. Luk at the flower just blotched red an' white loike fayver blotches an' Spearmint, that saves ye if ya pizen yerself with Spaszum-root, an' shure it grows right next it in the woods!

And, indeed, what good would it have done them when the clock was run down and stood always at the hour of noon? But they knew where thoroughwort grows, and the wholesome goldthread; they gathered cress and peppermint, and could tell the mushroom from its noisome kindred.