h-brush. This little difficulty
gave us more trouble that night, at Tom Miller's, than anything we had
yet encountered. At the taverns, bribes had answered our purpose; but
this would not do so well at a farm residence. At length the matter was
got along with by putting me in the garret, where I was favoured with a
straw bed under my own roof, the decent Mrs. Miller making many
apologies for not having a feather-smotherer, in which to "squash" me. I
did not tell the good woman that I never used feathers, summer or
winter; for, had I done so, she would have set me down as a poor
creature from "oppressed" Germany, where the "folks" did not know how to
live. Nor would she have been so much out of the way _quoad_ the beds,
for in all my journeyings I never met with such uncomfortable sleeping
as one finds in Germany, off the Rhine and out of the large towns.[3]

While the negotiation was in progress I observed that Josh Brigham, as
the anti-rent disposed hireling of Miller's was called, kept a watchful
eye and an open ear on what was done and said. Of all men on earth, the
American of that class is the most "distrustful," as he calls it
himself, and has his suspicions the soonest awakened. The Indian on the
war-path--the sentinel who is posted in a fog, near his enemy, an hour
before the dawn of day--the husband that is jealous, or the priest that
has become a partisan, is not a whit more apt to fancy, conjecture, or
assert, than the American of that class who has become "distrustful."
This fellow, Brigham, was the very beau ideal of the suspicious school,
being envious and malignant, as well as shrewd, observant, and covetous.
The very fact that he was connected with the "Injins," as turned out to
be the case, added to his natural propensities the consciousness of
guilt, and rendered him doubly dangerous. The whole time my uncle and
myself were crossing over and figuring in, in order to procure for each
a room, though it were only a closet, his watchful, distrustful looks
denoted how much he saw in our movements to awaken curiosity, if not
downright suspicion. When all was over, he followed me to the little
lawn in front of the house, whither I had gone to look at the familiar
scene by the light of the setting sun, and began to betray the nature of
his own suspicions by his language.

"The old man" (meaning my uncle Ro) "must have plenty of gold watches
about him," he said, "to be so plaguy partic'lar consarnin' his bed.