is drawed to the north. It is the same, Martha says, if you is
on a quest fur a father or a mother, only you have got to be worthy of
that there quest, she says. The first time you meet the right one you
are drawed jest like the witch hazel. That is the Intangible Something
working on you, she says. Martha had learnt a lot about that. The book
that had fell in the crick was like that. She lent it to me.

Well, that all sounded kind of reasonable to me. I seen that witch hazel
work myself. Old Blindy Wolfe, whose eyes had been dead fur so many
years they had turned plumb white, had that gift, and picked out all the
places fur wells that was dug in our neighbourhood at home. And I makes
up my mind I will watch out fur that feeling of being drawed wherever I
goes after this. You can't tell what will come of them kind of things.
So purty soon Martha has to milk the cow, and I goes along back to camp
thinking about that quest and about what a purty girl she is, which we
had set there talking so long it was nigh sundown and my clothes had
dried onto me.

When I got over to camp I seen they must be something wrong. Looey was
setting in the grass under the wagon looking kind of sour and kind of
worried and watching the doctor. The doctor was jest inside the tent,
and he was looking queer too, and not cheerful, which he was usually.

The doctor looks at me like he don't skeercly know me. Which he don't.
He has one of them quiet kind of drunks on. Which Looey explains is
bound to come every so often. He don't do nothing mean, but jest gets
low-sperrited and won't talk to no one. Then all of a sudden he will go
down town and walk up and down the main streets, orderly, but looking
hard into people's faces, mostly women's faces. Oncet, Looey says, they
was big trouble over it. They was in a store in a good-sized town, and
he took hold of a woman's chin, and tilted her face back, and looked at
her hard, and most scared her to death, and they was nearly being a riot
there. And he was jailed and had to pay a big fine. Since then Looey
always follers him around when he is that-a-way.

Well, that night Doctor Kirby is too fur gone fur us to have our show.
He jest sets and stares and stares at the fire, and his eyes looks like
they is another fire inside of his head, and he is hurting outside and
in. Looey and me watches him from the shadders fur a long time before
we turns in, and the last thing I seen before I went to sleep was him