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Updated: May 25, 2025
The Oven was a sort of cave or grotto in the cliffs, four miles from Scrapplehead, but rather less than three from the causeway. Its real name was "The Devil's Oven." Country people, and Maine country people above all others, are very fond of calling all sorts of strange and striking places after the devil.
I had just time to drive over and catch the Portland steamer, but my wagon broke down six miles from Malachi, and when I got in she had been gone an hour and a half. I made inquiries, and found that the Scrapplehead stage started next morning, so I hired a boat and undertook to row across. It was not storming then.
There was no one to explain the little difficulties that arose, and she grew puzzled and confused, and lost the desire to go on. Another thing which she missed very much was going to church. There had never been either a church or a Sunday-school in Scrapplehead, and the people who made any difference for Sunday made it by idling about, which was almost worse than working.
The mails came into Scrapplehead twice a week, but he seldom had any letters, and Eyebright never, so, as a general thing, they were not very particular about calling regularly at the post-office. Eyebright wanted to go, too, but the day was so cold that papa thought she would better not.
"Oh, isn't Maine beautiful!" cried Eyebright, in a rapture. She felt a sort of resentment against Wealthy for having called it a "God-forsaken" place. "But Wealthy didn't know: she never was here," was her final conclusion. "If she ever had been here, she couldn't have been so silly." It was too dark to see much of Scrapplehead when at last they got there.
So the goods were landed on the dock at Scrapplehead, and Mr. Downs undertook to find an ox-team to draw them across the causeway at low tide. Getting oxen was not an easy matter at that season of the year, but Mr. Downs, who had taken a fancy to his lodgers, bestirred himself, and at last found some one willing to let his yoke go in consideration of a dollar and a quarter.
One great swirling wave ran up and curled around the oxen's hoofs just as they reached firm ground, but, though Eyebright gave a little scream, and Mr. Downs frowned and said, "by gosh!" no harm was done, and the momentary fright only made pleasanter their drive to Scrapplehead, which they reached just as the sun sank for the night into a great soft-looking bed of purple and crimson clouds.
And even when pleasant days came, and the waves grew calm, and the beautiful color returned to the water, still the other and frightful look of the ocean remained in her memory, and her bad dreams were always about storms and shipwrecks. Many more boats passed between Malachi and Scrapplehead in winter than in summer.
It was twenty-two miles from the nameless village to Scrapplehead, but it took all the afternoon to make the journey, for the roads were rough and hilly, and fast going was impossible. Eyebright did not care how slowly they went. Every step of the way was interesting to her, full of fresh sights and sounds and smells. She had never seen such woods as those which they passed through.
Downs didn't think his arm was broken; but she couldn't be sure, and "he" was sent up the shore to fetch Dr. Treat, the "natural bone-setter." There was no regular doctor at Scrapplehead. The natural bone-setter pronounced the arm not broken, but badly cut and bruised, and the shoulder dislocated.
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