d up
tremendously. Fortunately, the wind carried the flame and sparks away
from the tavern and barns, or the whole establishment might have burned
down. The crackling was terrific; the firs as well as the witches'
brooms burned. Great gusts of flame and vapor rose, writhing and
twisting in the wind. Any one might have imagined them to be witches of
the olden time, riding wildly away up toward the half-obscured moon!

So great was the heat that it proved impossible to save the rack and
sleds, or even the near-by garden fence, which had caught fire.

That disaster ended the trip. It was now too near Christmas Day to get
more large firs, to say nothing of witches' brooms; and we were obliged
to send word to this effect to our Portland patrons. The next morning
Addison and I rode home on old Jim and Buckskin, with their harness tied
up in a bundle before us. The wind was piercing and bleak; we were both
so chilled as to be ill of a cold for several days afterward. The story
that we had to tell at home was far from being an inspiriting one. Not
only had we lost our load, traverse sleds and rack, but in due time we
had a bill of ten dollars to pay the hotel keeper for his garden fence.

We always supposed that those drunken ruffians touched off our load just
before driving away; but of course it may have been a spark from the
chimney.

That was our first and last experience with witches' brooms.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE LITTLE IMAGE PEDDLERS

I think it was the following Friday afternoon that a curious diversion
occurred at the schoolhouse, just as the school was dismissed. Coming
slowly along the white highway two small boys were espied, each carrying
on his head a raft-like platform laden with plaster-of-Paris images.
They were dark-complexioned little fellows, not more than twelve or
thirteen years old; and were having difficulty to keep their feet and
stagger along with their preposterous burdens.

The plaster casts comprised images of saints, elephants, giraffes,
cherubs with little wings tinted in pink and yellow, a tall Madonna and
Child, a bust of George Washington, a Napoleon, a grinning Voltaire, an
angel with a pink trumpet and an evil-looking Tom Paine.

I suppose the loads were not as heavy as they looked, but the boys were
having a hard time of it, to judge from their distressed faces peering
anxiously from underneath the rafts which, at each step, rocked to and
fro and seemed always on the point of