s your way, and come between husband and
wife when they row, and do a heap of good in the world. Well, they was
other kind of quests too, but mostly you married somebody, or was dubbed
a night, or found the party you was looking fur, in the end. And Martha
had it all fixed up in her own mind I was in a quest to find my father.
Fur, says she, he is purty certain to be a powerful rich man and more'n
likely a earl.

The way I was found, Martha says, kind o' pints to the idea they was a
earl mixed up in it somewhere. She had read a lot about earls, and knew
their ways. Mebby my mother was a earl's daughter. Earl's daughters is
the worst fur leaving you out in baskets, going by what Martha said. It
is a kind of a habit with them, fur they is awful proud people. But it
was a lucky way to start life, from all she said, that basket way. There
was Moses was left out that way, and when he growed up he was made a
kind of a president of the hull human race, the same as Ruzevelt, and
figgered out the twelve commandments. Martha would of give anything if
she could of only been found in a basket like me, I could see that. But
she wasn't. She had jest been left a orphan when her folks died. They
wasn't even no hopes she had been changed at birth fur another one. But
I seen down in under everything Martha kind o' thought mebby one of them
nights might come a-prancing along and wed her in spite of herself, or
she would be carried off, or something. She was a very romanceful kind
of girl.

When I seen she had it figgered out I was in a quest fur some
high-mucky-muck fur a dad, I didn't tell her no different. I didn't take
much stock in them earls and nights myself. So fur as I could see they
was all furriners of one kind or another. But that thing of being into a
quest kind of interested me, too.

"How would I know him if I was to run acrost him?" I asts her.

"You would feel an Intangible Something," she says, "drawing you toward
him."

I asts her what kind of a something. I make out from what she says it is
some like these fellers that can find water with a piece of witch hazel
switch. You take a switch of it between your thumbs and point it up.
Then you shut your eyes and walk backwards. When you get over where the
water is the witch hazel stick twists around and points to the ground.
You dig there and you get a good well. Nobody knows jest why that
stick is drawed to the ground. It is like one of these little whirlygig
compasses