st land-surveyor planted there for one of his points of sight.
John was reminded of it years after when he sat under the shade of the
decrepit lime-tree in Freiburg and was told that it was originally a
twig which the breathless and bloody messenger carried in his hand when
he dropped exhausted in the square with the word "Victory!" on his lips,
announcing thus the result of the glorious battle of Morat, where the
Swiss in 1476 defeated Charles the Bold. Under the broad but scanty
shade of the great button-ball tree (as it was called) stood an old
watering-trough, with its half-decayed penstock and well-worn spout
pouring forever cold, sparkling water into the overflowing trough. It is
fed by a spring near by, and the water is sweeter and colder than any in
the known world, unless it be the well Zem-zem, as generations of people
and horses which have drunk of it would testify, if they could come
back. And if they could file along this road again, what a procession
there would be riding down the valley!--antiquated vehicles, rusty
wagons adorned with the invariable buffalo-robe even in the hottest
days, lean and long-favored horses, frisky colts, drawing, generation
after generation, the sober and pious saints, that passed this way to
meeting and to mill.

What a refreshment is that water-spout! All day long there are pilgrims
to it, and John likes nothing better than to watch them. Here comes a
gray horse drawing a buggy with two men,--cattle buyers, probably.
Out jumps a man, down goes the check-rein. What a good draught the nag
takes! Here comes a long-stepping trotter in a sulky; man in a brown
linen coat and wide-awake hat,--dissolute, horsey-looking man. They turn
up, of course. Ah, there is an establishment he knows well: a sorrel
horse and an old chaise. The sorrel horse scents the water afar off, and
begins to turn up long before he reaches the trough, thrusting out his
nose in anticipation of the coot sensation. No check to let down; he
plunges his nose in nearly to his eyes in his haste to get at it. Two
maiden ladies--unmistakably such, though they appear neither "anxious
nor aimless"--within the scoop-top smile benevolently on the sorrel
back. It is the deacon's horse, a meeting-going nag, with a sedate,
leisurely jog as he goes; and these are two of the "salt of the
earth,"--the brevet rank of the women who stand and wait,--going down to
the village store to dicker. There come two men in a hurry, horse drive