Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/153

 his vestibuled home at Beanville—I won't name the State—in an idle quest for tourmalines and amethysts, often found in that locality. A horse-dealer had told us of the place, and Tib immediately took a fancy to loiter about a few days. It was while at Beanville that we first heard of Tanker's Mills, twelve miles back in the mountains. It was connected with the outside world largely by heartthrobs, for the rough country road evidently was constructed while the workmen were entertaining the delirium tremens.

"It seems that at the close of the Civil War the only insane asylum in the State burned down, and that a score of the inmates in escaping the flames wandered up to Tanker's and took possession of a few deserted cabins. As the commonwealth was bedridden with debt, and as the little colony was quiet and gave no trouble, the authorities decided to leave it alone to market its own garden sass. In the settlement were several men of unusual culture, perfectly rational except on some one subject, and as they controlled the weaker minded and more perfectly crazy inhabitants, the tax-payers were glad to be rid of the whole outfit. As the years passed, the colony grew, and the individual streaks of non compos were relegated to and merged in a general plane of oddity. It became the custom when a man or woman got daffy to take them up there to