turned handle, like
those you see in Colonial museums, but a common iron pan, fastened to a
hickory sapling; and she went as fast as she could, without running--for
girls never ran "before folks" in those days--over to the nearest
neighbor, to "borrow a handful of fire."

The neighbors were just getting up, and their fire was too low to spare
any, so Hannah had to wait until some hardwood sticks got well to burning.
While she waited, the trader, who was staying overnight in that house,
went on with a long story about an Indian herb-doctor, of whose cures he
had heard marvelous tales, three days' journey back. It seemed that the
Indian's specialty was curing girls who had gone into a decline, and that
he had never failed in a single case he had undertaken.

You can imagine how Hannah's loving, anxious heart leaped up, and how
eagerly she questioned the trader about the road to the settlement where
the Indian lived. It was in a place called Heath Falls, on the Connecticut
River, the trader told her; but he could not find words strong enough to
advise her against trying the trip.

The trail lay through thick woods, filled with all the terrors of early
New Englanders--bears and wolves and catamounts. And when she got to Heath
Falls, she would find it a very different place from Hillsboro, where
people took you in gladly for the sake of the news you brought from the
outside world. No, the folks in Heath Falls were very grand. They traveled
themselves, and saw more strangers than a little. You had to pay good
money for shelter and food, and, of course, the doctor did not cure for
nothing. He was a kind man, the trader, and he did his best to keep Hannah
from a wildly foolish enterprise.

But his best was not good enough. She went home and looked at her poor Ann
Mary, as white as a snowdrift, her big dark eyes ringed with black
circles, and Hannah knew only two things in the world--that there was a
doctor who could cure her sister, and that she must get her to him. She
was only a child herself; she had no money, no horses, no experience; but
nothing made any difference to her. Ann Mary should go to the doctor, if
Hannah had to carry her every step!

A spirit like that knows no obstacles. Although Hillsboro held up hands
of horror, and implored John Sherwin to assert his parental authority and
forbid his girl such a rash, unmaidenly, bold undertaking, the end of it
was that Hannah got her father's permission. He loved his