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The Flat-Iron Lot
by
Nicholas stood quite calmly looking through the window into the morning dew and mist. He wore his habitual air of gentle indifference, and the doctor saw in him those everlasting hills which persuasion may not climb. Suddenly there was a rustling from the other room, and Mary appeared in the doorway, standing there expectant. Her face was pink and a little vague from sleep, but she looked very dear and good. Though Nicholas had “lost himself” that night, he had kept time for thought; and perhaps he realized how precious a thing it is to lay up treasure of inheritance for one who loves us, and is truly of our kind. He turned quite meekly to the doctor.
“Should you think,” he inquired, “should you think pa’son would be up an’ dressed?”
Ten minutes thereafter, the two were knocking at the parson’s door.
Confused and turbulent as Tiverton had become, Nicholas Oldfield settled her at once. Knowledge dripped from his finger-ends; he had it ready, like oil to give a clock. Doctor and minister stood breathless while he laid out the track for the procession by local marks they both knew well.
“They must ha’ come into the town from som’er’s nigh the old cross-road,” said he. “No, ‘t wa’n’t where they made the river road. Then they turned straight to one side–‘t was thick woods then, you understand–an’ went up a little ways towards Horn o’ the Moon. But they concluded that wouldn’t suit ’em, ‘t was so barren-like; an’ they wheeled round, took what’s now the old turnpike, an’ clim’ right up Tiverton Hill, through Tiverton Street that now is. An’ there”–Nicholas Oldfield’s eyes burned like blue flame, and again he told the story of the Flat-Iron Lot.
“Indeed!” cried the parson. “What a truly remarkable circumstance! We might halt on that very spot, and offer prayer, before entering the church.”
“‘Pears as if that would be about the rights on ‘t,” said Nicholas quietly. “That is, if anybody wanted to plan it out jest as ‘t was.” He could free his words from the pride of life, but not his voice; it quivered and betrayed him.
“Your idea would be to have the services before going down for the Indian raid?” inquired the doctor. “They’re all at loggerheads there.”
But Nicholas, hearing how neither faction would forego its glory, had the remedy ready in a cranny of his brain.
“Well,” said he, “you know there was a raid in ’53, when both sides gi’n up an’ run. A crazed creatur on a white horse galloped up an’ dispersed ’em. He was all wropped up in a sheet, and carried a jack-o’-lantern on a pole over his head, so ‘t he seemed more ‘n nine feet high. The settlers thought ’twas a spirit; an’ as for the Injuns, Lord knows what ‘t was to them. ‘T any rate, the raid was over.”
“Heaven be praised!” cried the doctor fervently. “Allah is great, and you, Mr. Oldfield, are his prophet. Stay here and coach the parson while I start up the town.”
The doctor dashed home and mounted his horse. It was said that he did some tall riding that day. From door to door he galloped, a lesser Paul Revere, but sowing seeds of harmony. It was true that the soil was ready. Indians in full costume were lurking down cellar or behind kitchen doors, swearing they would never ride, but tremblingly eager to be urged. Settlers, gloomily acquiescent in an unjust fate, brightened at his heralding. The ghost was the thing. It took the popular fancy; and everybody wondered, as after all illuminings of genius, why nobody had thought of it before. Brad Freeman was unanimously elected to act the part, as the only living man likely to manage a supplementary head without rehearsal; and Pillsbury’s white colt was hastily groomed for the onslaught. Brad had at once seen the possibilities of the situation and decided, with an unerring certainty, that as a jack-o’-lantern is naught by day, the pumpkin face must be cunningly veiled. He was a busy man that morning; for he not only had to arrange his own ghostly progress, but settle the elephant on its platform, to be dragged by vine-wreathed oxen, and also, at the doctor’s instigation, to make the sledge on which the first Nicholas Oldfield should draw his wife into town. The doctor sought out Young Nick, and asked him to undertake the part, as tribute to his illustrious name; but he was of a prudent nature and declined. What if the town should laugh! “I guess I won’t,” said he.