"Fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow.
"Will I which?"
"Will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for--"
"What are you giving me?" I said. "Get along back to your circus,
or I'll report you."
Now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards
and then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his
nail-keg bent down nearly to his horse's neck and his long spear
pointed straight ahead. I saw he meant business, so I was up
the tree when he arrived.
He allowed that I was his property, the captive of his spear.
There was argument on his side--and the bulk of the advantage
--so I judged it best to humor him. We fixed up an agreement
whereby I was to go with him and he was not to hurt me. I came
down, and we started away, I walking by the side of his horse.
We marched comfortably along, through glades and over brooks which
I could not remember to have seen before--which puzzled me and
made me wonder--and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of
a circus. So I gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he was
from an asylum. But we never came to an asylum--so I was up
a stump, as you may say. I asked him how far we were from Hartford.
He said he had never heard of the place; which I took to be a lie,
but allowed it to go at that. At the end of an hour we saw a
far-away town sleeping in a valley by a winding river; and beyond
it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with towers and turrets,
the first I had ever seen out of a picture.
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