shman follows
his wheel-barrow. I shove it! See? But that is not the way of the rest
of them, thank Fortune! And so Pepeeta gathers them in! Strange fish
g-g-get into her net, Davy. Back there in your own little t-t-town she
caught some of your long-faced old Quakers, b-b-big fellows with
broad-brimmed hats, drab coats and ox eyes, regular meetin'-goers! And
there was that little d-d-dove-eyed girl. What was it she wanted to
know, P-P-Pepeeta? Tell him. Ha! ha! Tell him and we will see him
b-b-blush."

"She asked me if her father was going to send her to Philadelphia this
winter," she answered, without lifting her eyes.

"I don't mean that!"

"She asked me whether I could tell them where to find the spotted
heifer."

"The d-d-deuce, child! Why don't you tell me what she asked you 'bout
D-D-Davy?"

"It is time for us to go to supper or we shall be late," she replied,
laying aside her work and rising.

"Sure enough!" cried the doctor, springing to his feet. "The Q-Q-Quaker
has knocked everything out of my head. Come on!"

He rose and began bustling about the room.

When Pepeeta glanced up from her work she saw in David's eye a grateful
appreciation of her courtesy and tact, and his look filled her with a
new happiness.

The disgust awakened in the Quaker's mind by the coarseness of the quack
was more than offset by the beauty and grace of the gypsy. When he
looked at her, when he was even conscious of her presence, he felt a
happiness which compensated for all that he had suffered or lost. He did
not stop to ask what its nature was. He had cast discretion to the
winds. He had in these few hours since his departure broken so utterly
with the past that he was like a man who had been suddenly awakened from
a long lapse of memory. His old life was as if it had never been. He
felt himself to be in a vacuum, where all his ideas must be newly
created. This epoch of his experience was superimposed upon the other
like a different geological formation. Like the old monks in their
cells, he was deliberately trying to erase from the parchment of his
soul all that had been previously written, in order that he might begin
a new life history.

CHAPTER XII.

THE MOTH AND THE FLAME

"Misled by Fancy's meteor-ray
By passion driven:
But yet the light that led astray
Was light from heaven."

--Burns.

A little before dusk the three companions started upon their evening's
business.