an air of secrecy and importance to the last. It may not have
been only the common aids of humanity with which she tried to cope; it
seemed sometimes as if love and hate and jealousy and adverse winds at
sea might also find their proper remedies among the curious wild-looking
plants in Mrs. Todd's garden.

The village doctor and this learned herbalist were upon the best of
terms. The good man may have counted upon the unfavorable effect of
certain potions which he should find his opportunity in counteracting;
at any rate, he now and then stopped and exchanged greetings with Mrs.
Todd over the picket fence. The conversation became at once professional
after the briefest preliminaries, and he would stand twirling a
sweet-scented sprig in his fingers, and make suggestive jokes, perhaps
about her faith in a too persistent course of thoroughwort elixir, in
which my landlady professed such firm belief as sometimes to endanger
the life and usefulness of worthy neighbors.

To arrive at this quietest of seaside villages late in June, when the
busy herb-gathering season was just beginning, was also to arrive in
the early prime of Mrs. Todd's activity in the brewing of old-fashioned
spruce beer. This cooling and refreshing drink had been brought to
wonderful perfection through a long series of experiments; it had won
immense local fame, and the supplies for its manufacture were always
giving out and having to be replenished. For various reasons, the
seclusion and uninterrupted days which had been looked forward to proved
to be very rare in this otherwise delightful corner of the world. My
hostess and I had made our shrewd business agreement on the basis of a
simple cold luncheon at noon, and liberal restitution in the matter of
hot suppers, to provide for which the lodger might sometimes be seen
hurrying down the road, late in the day, with cunner line in hand.
It was soon found that this arrangement made large allowance for Mrs.
Todd's slow herb-gathering progresses through woods and pastures. The
spruce-beer customers were pretty steady in hot weather, and there were
many demands for different soothing syrups and elixirs with which the
unwise curiosity of my early residence had made me acquainted. Knowing
Mrs. Todd to be a widow, who had little beside this slender business and
the income from one hungry lodger to maintain her, one's energies and
even interest were quickly bestowed, until it became a matter of course
that she s