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Her qualifications as white witch were boundless cunning, equally boundless good nature, considerable knowledge of human weaknesses, some mesmeric power, some skill in "yarbs," as she called her simples, a firm faith in the virtue of her own incantations, and the faculty of holding her tongue.
The English-speaking settler, equipped with ax and sickle and flail, with spinning wheel and iron kettle, lived a life almost equally primitive and self-contained. He and his good wife grew the wheat, the corn, and the potatoes, made the soap and the candles, the maple sugar and the "yarbs," the deerskin shoes and the homespun-cloth that met their needs. They had little to buy and little to sell.
They gave one another medical advice and prescriptions of "roots and yarbs" for their "rheumatiz," "neuralgy," and "tissick;" and some took snuff together, while an ancient dame smoked a quiet pipe.
But there's no knowing: it isn't every queer-looksed thing as Old Harry's had the making of I mean, speaking o' toads and such; for they're often harmless, like, and useful against varmin. And it's pretty much the same wi' you, as fur as I can see. Though as to the yarbs and stuff to cure the breathing, if you brought that sort o' knowledge from distant parts, you might ha' been a bit freer of it.
Not a drop of whisky in his outfit! I'd slit his tongue fer him if he wasn't already done fer. I must keep movin' movin', or I'm a dead man. I must hustle along to the mountains, leadin' my horse. Up there I'll find yarbs to cure snake-bite that my Cherokee grandmother showed me. The Rurales will have to get the other ponies but some day I'll come back after Lane's cache."
When this was ended, he took up his game, and, showing it to the party without a head, he cried: Here is a tidbit for an old mans Christmas never mind the venison, boy, and remember Indian John; his yarbs are better than all the foreign intments.
"So Dan went down ter Aun' Peggy de nex' night, wid a young shote, en Aun' Peggy gun 'im de cha'm. She had tuk de ha'rs Dan had lef wid 'er, en a piece er red flannin, en some roots en yarbs, en had put 'em in a little bag made out'n 'coon-skin.
It was a very good thing for all parties; and he would take no pay for his trouble, but sent down a pitcher with what he called 'all manner of yarbs' steeping in it, with which, as he said, to 'ferment the boy's limbs. Foment was what he meant; and Mrs.
"An' I'll take my pay in some uv yer dried apples. Heow much does Fisher give fur socks, Miss Ruggles?" she asked, directly. "Fifty cents and I find, fifteen and he finds." "An' ye take yer pay out uv the store? Varry reasonable. I wuz thinkin' uv tryin' my han' myself; business's ruther dull, folks onkimmon well this fall. Heow many strings yer gwine ter give me fur the yarbs?"
With the vehemence of her insistence her small wizened face would suddenly contract; the tortures of the rheumatism, particularly rife in such weather, would seize upon her, and she would cry aloud with anguish, and clutch her stick and smite her granddaughter to expedite the search for the primitive remedies of dried "yarbs" on which her comfort depended.
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