ear to ear. And when any one meets us, and asks the meaning of the
strange procession, you will say: 'I am weeping because our little pig
has to die!' And if any one says to me, 'Why are you grinning from ear to
ear?' I shall answer, 'Because I am going to eat him. We are going to
stuff him with onions at the next inn, and eat roast pig at the rising of
the moon.'"

But we lacked courage to put our little joke into practice, fearing an
insufficient appreciation of the fantastic in that particular region.

We were now making for Watkins, and had spent the night at Bradford, a
particularly charming village almost lost amid the wooded hills of
another lovely and spacious valley, through which we had lyrically walked
the day before. Bradford is a real country village, and was already all
in a darkness smelling of cows and apples, when we groped for it among
the woods the evening before. At starting out next morning, we inquired
the way to Watkins of a storekeeper standing at his shop-door. He was in
conversation with an acquaintance, and our questions occasioned a lively
argument as to which was the better of two roads. The acquaintance was
for the road through "Pine Creek," and he added, with a grim smile, "I
guess I should know; I've travelled it often enough with a heavy load
behind"; and the recollection of the rough hills he had gone bumping
over, all evidently fresh in his mind, seemed to give him a curious
amusement. It transpired that he was an undertaker!

So we took the road to Pine Creek, but at the threshold of the village
our fancy was taken by the particularly quaint white wooden
meeting-house, surrounded on three sides with tie-up sheds for vehicles,
each stall having a name affixed to it, like a pew: "P. Yawger," "A.W.
Gillum," "Pastor," and so on. Here the pious of the district tied up