Page:Thoreau - His Home, Friends and Books (1902).djvu/140

118 was so extreme that there was an earthquake in warning and, at the concussion, the stones rolled down the hillside and thus formed the present paved shore. He also suggests another possible derivation;—"If the name was not derived from some English locality,—Saffron Walden for instance,—one might suppose that it was originally called Walled-in-Pond." Later, it was the encampment of a band of outlaws whose evil deeds long frightened the Concord farmers and whose downfall from virtue was due to "a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding part in our New England life, and deserves as much as any mythological character, to have his biography written one day; who first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family,—New England Bum." In this vicinity also lived for many years, Zilpha, the noisy witchlike singer and spinner, and her descendant, the quiet, yet awe-inspiring sooth-sayer, Zenda. Senator Hoar recalls a tradition of his boyhood, told by one Tommy Wyman whose hut was near Walden, that an Indian doctor dwelt in a hidden recess near the pond and would seize children and cut up their livers to make medicines.

Upon the north shore of the pond, just above its