emerge from a dark wood, five
miles through, perhaps, and find myself near a clearing where the
farmer's house I was seeking lay, half a mile off the road. Picking up
a stout club to defend myself against the inevitable dog, which, in the
absence of men-folks, guarded every log-house, I plodded across the
plowed field, soon to be met by the ferocious beast, who, not seeing a
stranger more than once a month, was always furious and dangerous. Out
would come, at length, the poor woman, too curious to see who it was
that broke up her monotonous solitude, to call off the dog, who
generally grew fiercer as he felt his backer near him, and it was
commonly with a feeling as of a bare escape of my life that I finally
got into the house. It was sad enough, too, often to find sickness and
death in those fever-stricken abodes--a wan mother nursing one dying
child, with perhaps another dead in the house. My business, too, was not
the most welcome. I came to dun a delinquent debtor, who had perhaps
been inveigled by some peddler of our goods into an imprudent purchase,
for a payment which it was inconvenient or impossible to make. There, in
the corner, hung the wooden clock, the payment for which I was after,
ticking off the last minutes of the sick child--the only ornament of the
poor cabin. It was very painful to urge my business under such
circumstances. However, I succeeded, by kindness, in getting more money
than I expected from our debtors, who would always pay when they could.
I recollect, one night, almost bewailing my success. I had reached the
entrance of a forest, at least nine miles through, and finding a little
tavern there, concluded it was prudent to put up and wait till morning.
There were two rough-looking fellows around, hunters, with rifles in
their hands, whose appearance did not please me, and I fancied they
looked at each other significantly when the landlord took off my
saddle-bags and weighted them, feeling the hundred dollars of silver I
had collected. I was put into the attic, reached by a ladder, and,
barricading the trap-door as well as I could, went to sleep with one
eye open. Nothing, however, occurred, and in the morning I found my
wild-looking men up as early as I, and was not a little disturbed when
they proposed to keep me company across the forest. Afraid to show any
suspicion, I consented, and then went and looked at the little
flint-pistol I carried, formidable only to sparrows, but which was my
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