ng for the
imagination to paint for the senses, both in the visible and invisible
world.

In the meantime the distant thunder gave notice of a shower at hand,
and just as we reached Polley's tavern the rain poured down in
torrents. It was soon over, the cloud passing in the direction of the
turnpike toward Providence. In a few moments after, a
respectable-looking man in a chaise stopped at the door. The man and
child in the chair having excited some little sympathy among the
passengers, the gentleman was asked if he had observed them. He said
he had met them; that the man seemed bewildered, and inquired the way
to Boston; that he was driving at great speed, as though he expected
to outstrip the tempest; that the moment he had passed him a
thunderclap broke distinctly over the man's head and seemed to envelop
both man and child, horse and carriage. "I stopped," said the
gentleman, "supposing the lightning had struck him, but the horse only
seemed to loom up and increase his speed, and, as well as I could
judge, he travelled just as fast as the thunder cloud." While this
man was speaking, a peddler with a cart of tin merchandise came up,
all dripping; and, on being questioned, he said he had met that man
and carriage, within a fortnight, in four different States; that at
each time he had inquired the way to Boston; and that a thunder shower
like the present had each time deluged him, his wagon and his wares,
setting his tin pots, etc., afloat, so that he had determined to get
marine insurance done for the future. But that which excited his
surprise most was the strange conduct of his horse, for that, long
before he could distinguish the man in the chair, his own horse stood
still in the road and flung back his ears. "In short," said the
peddler, "I wish never to see that man and horse again; they do not
look to me as if they belonged to this world."

This is all that I could learn at that time; and the occurrence soon
after would have become with me like one of those things which had
never happened, had I not, as I stood recently on the doorstep of
Bennett's Hotel in Hartford, heard a man say, "There goes Peter Rugg
and his child! he looks wet and weary, and farther from Boston than
ever." I was satisfied it was the same man that I had seen more than
three years before; for whoever has once seen Peter Rugg can never
after be deceived as to his identity. "Peter Rugg!" said I, "and who
is Peter Rugg?" "That," said the st