Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/155

 the fire in their big fireplace completely extinguished. She snatched up the warming-pan—not a polished brass one with a smooth, turned handle, like those you see in Colonial museums, but a common iron pan, fastened to a hickory sapling; and she went as fast as she could, without running—for girls never ran "before folks" in those days—over to the nearest neighbor, to "borrow a handful of fire."

The neighbors were just getting up, and their fire was too low to spare any, so Hannah had to wait until some hardwood sticks got well to burning. While she waited, the trader, who was staying overnight in that house, went on with a long story about an Indian herb-doctor, of whose cures he had heard marvelous tales, three days' journey back. It seemed that the Indian's specialty was curing girls who had gone into a decline, and that he had never failed in a single case he had undertaken.

You can imagine how Hannah's loving, anxious heart leaped up, and how eagerly she questioned the trader about the road to the settlement where the Indian lived. It was in a place called Heath Falls, on the Connecticut River, the trader told her; but he could not find words strong enough to advise her against trying the trip.

The trail lay through thick woods, filled with all the terrors of early New Englanders—bears and wolves and catamounts. And when she got to Heath Falls, she would find it a very different place from Hillsboro, where people took you in gladly for the sake of the news you brought from the outside world. No, the folks in Heath Falls were very grand. They traveled themselves, and saw more strangers than a little. You had to pay good money