On Friday afternoon, the twenty-eighth of June, Deacon Crockett's horse ran away. It was not a suitable thing, not at all what a settled community had a right to expect of a horse with stubby legs and no mane to speak of, who had grown old in the order of decent conduct. He ran into Mrs. Cullom Sanderson's basket phaeton and spilled Mrs. Cullom on the ground, which was taking a grave responsibility. It was done in the midst of Hagar. Harvey Cummings jumped out of the way and said, “Deb it!” There was no concealment about it. Everybody heard of it and said it was astonishing.

The name of the deacon's horse was Joppa. The deacon's father-in-law, Captain David Brett, had an iron-gray named Borneo. Borneo and Joppa did not agree, on account of Borneo's kicking Joppa in the ribs to show his contempt. It was natural that he should have this contempt, being sleek and spirited himself, with a nautical gait that every one admitted to be taking; and Joppa did not think it unnatural in him to show it. Without questioning the justice of Borneo's position, he disliked being kicked in the ribs.

Borneo had been eating grass by the roadside; Joppa stood harnessed in front of the horse-block; Mrs. Crockett stood on the horse-block; Borneo came around and kicked Joppa in the ribs; Joppa ran away; Mrs. Crockett shrieked; Harvey Cummings said “Deb it!” and Mrs. Cullom Sanderson was spilled. She weighed two hundred pounds and covered a deal of ground when she was spilled.

He crossed the bridge and tore along the Salem Road, his stubby legs pattering under him, and a great fear in his soul of the shouting village behind. Angelica and Willy Flint saw him coming.

“It's a runaway!” shouted Angelica.

Willy Flint continued swinging on the gate. He thought it his place to be self-contained and accurate.

“It's Joppa,” he said calmly.

But Angelica did not care for appearances. She shied a clam-shell at Joppa, said “Hi there!” and jumped around.

Joppa swerved sharply, the deacon's buggy turned several sides up, if that is possible, bobbed along behind, and then broke loose at the thills. Joppa fled madly up the side road that leads to Scrabble Up and Down, and disappeared over the crest of the hill, leaving Angelica and Willy Flint to gloat over the wreck of the buggy. It gratified a number of their instincts.

The region called Scrabble Up and Down, as well as the road which leads to it, is distinguished by innumerable small steep hills and hollows. For the rest, it is a sandy and ill-populated district, and a lonely road. Westward of it lies a wilderness of underbrush and stunted trees, rising at last into exultant woods and billowing over the hills mile upon mile to the valley of the Wyantenaug. The South Woods do not belong to Scrabble Up and Down. They are put there to show Scrabble Up and Down what it cannot do.

The road winds around hillocks and down hollows in an aimless fashion; and for that reason it is not possible to see much of it at a time. When the villagers of Hagar reached the top of the first hill, Joppa was nearly a mile away, his stubby legs rather tired, his spirit more tranquil, and himself out of sight of the villagers of Hagar. He saw no point in turning back. Hagar gave him but a dull and unideal life, plodding between shafts before the austere and silent deacon, unaccountably smacked with a whip, and in constant contrast with Borneo's good looks. Joppa had not many ideas and little imagination. He did not feel drawn to go back. Moreover he smelt something damp and fresh in the direction of the woods which absorbed him. He stopped, sniffed, and looked around. The fence was broken here and there, as fences generally were in Scrabble Up and Down. The leaves were budding; there was a shimmer of green on the distant woods; and presently Joppa was wandering through the brush and scrub trees westward. The broken shafts dragged quietly beside him. He lifted his head a little higher than usual and had an odd feeling, as if he were enjoying himself.

A tumult, row, or excitement of any kind was considered by the children of Hagar a thing to be desired, assisted, and remembered gratefully. Some of the elders were much of the same mind. Joppa's action was therefore popular in Hagar, the more so that it was felt to be incongruous; and, when by no search that Friday afternoon nor the following Saturday could he be found, his reputation rose in leaps. He had gone over the hill and vanished like a ghost, commonplace, homely, plodding, downcast Joppa, known to Hagar in that fashion these dozen or more years and suddenly become the loud talk of the day. The road to Scrabble Up and Down and the roads far beyond were searched. Inquiry spread to Salem and to Gilead. On Saturday night notices were posted here and there by happy jokers relating to Joppa, one on the church door of Hagar requesting the prayers of the congregation. Mr. Atherton Bell thought the deacon's horse like “the deacon's one-hoss shay,” in that he had lasted an extraordinary time intact, and then disintegrated. Joppa had become a mystery, an excitement, a cause of wit. A definite addition had been made to the hoarded stock of tradition and jest; the lives of all seemed the richer. An atmosphere of deep and tranquil mirth pervaded the village, a kind of mellow light of humor, in the focus of which stood Deacon Crockett, and writhed.

It was hoped that the minister would preach on Joppa. He preached on “human insignificance,” and read of the war-horse, “Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?” but it was thought not to refer to Joppa.

As for the children of Hagar, did they not dream of him, and hear him thumping and blundering by in the winds of the dim night? They saw no humor in him, nor in the deacon. Rather it was a serious mystery, and they went about with the impression of it on their faces, having faith that the outcome would be worthy of the promise.

Harvey Cummings thought that the war-horse did not refer to Joppa, and said so on the steps of the church. “There wan'd no thudder aboud him. He was the meekest hoss in Hamilton County. He run away on accound of his shyness.”

Mr. Cummings had no palate to speak of, and his consonants were uncertain. Mr. Atherton Bell threw out his chest, as an orator should, put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and gazed at Mr. Cummings with a kindling eye.

“For a meek horse,” he said impressively, “he showed—a—great resolution when he spilled Mrs. Cullom Sanderson. I declare to you, Harvey, I give you my word, sir, I would not have missed seeing Mrs. Cullom spilled for a government contract.”

“Oh, indeed, Mr. Bell!” said Mrs. Cullom Sanderson, rustling past, “clothed with thunder” and black silk. Mr. Atherton Bell recovered himself slowly and moved to a greater distance from the church door. He was a politician and a legislator, but he found diplomacy difficult. Several others gathered around, desiring to hear the statesman. “Now suppose, Harvey, suppose the deacon too should take a notion to run away, knock over Mrs. Cullom, you know, and—a—disappear. Imagine it, Harvey.”

Mr. Cummings shook his head.

“Can't do it.”

Mr. Bell took off his hat and smiled expansively.

“It's a pleasing thought, ha! He might be translated—a—Elijah, you know. He might leave his mantle to—to me. Hitherto the deacon has lacked dramatic interest. Contact between Mrs. Cullom and Deacon Crockett would—” (here his hearers stirred appreciatively) “would have dramatic interest—Ah, good morning, deacon, good morning, sir. We were speaking of your loss. We—a—trust it will not be permanent.”

The deacon moved on without answering. Mr. Atherton Bell's spirit fell again, and he wiped his forehead nervously.

It would be a painful thing if a man were suddenly to enter into full sight of himself as others see him; it is a measure of distress even to have a passing glimpse—not so much because he sees a worse man, but because he sees a stranger.

Deacon Crockett had never asked himself how others saw him. He was not a flexible man. The grooves in which his life ran had been worn slowly in a hard substance. Its purports and ends had always seemed to him accurately measured and bounded. He exacted his rights, paid his dues, and had no doubts about either; held his conscience before him as a sword, dividing truth from falsehood. He stood by the faith of his forefathers, gave up no jot or tittle of it; there were no hazy outlying regions in that faith.

When a man observes himself to be a well-defined thing in certain relations with other well-defined things, has no more doubt of the meaning of his presence on the earth than of the function of a cogwheel in his watch, his footing seems singularly secure; the figure he makes in his own eyes not only grows rigid with habit, but seems logically exact to begin with. To doubt the function of the cog-wheel is to put in question the watch, which is impossible and a sufficient demonstration. Other men's opinions, if worth anything or considered at all, are assumed to be respectful; and the assumption seems just.

Why should he not feel impregnable in his personal dignity, who sees himself sufficiently fulfilling his function in an ordered scheme, a just man, elected to become perfect? Personal dignity is at least not a vulgar ambition. It was the deacon's ambition, the thing which he wished to characterize his life.

The deacon walked down the path from the church. He walked quietly and stiffly as usual, but the spirit within him was worse than angry; it was confused. The whole neighborhood seemed to be laughing at him; his fingers tingled at the thought.

But that was not the source of his confusion. It was, strangely, that there seemed to be no malice in the laughter, only a kind of amused friendliness. An insult and a resentment can be understood by a man of function, within his function; his resentment maintains his equilibrium. But, quite the contrary, his neighbors seemed timidly to invite him into the joke. Of all the hidden ways of laughter one comes last to that in which he may walk and be amused with himself; although it is only there that he is for the first time entirely comfortable in the world. Tim Rae, the town drunkard, met him where the path across the Green joins the road. It was Tim's habit to flee from the deacon's approach with feeble subterfuges, not because the deacon ever lectured him, but because the deacon's presence seemed to foreshorten his stature, and gave him a chill in the stomach, where he preferred “something warm.” Yet he ambled amiably across the road, and his air of good-fellowship could not have been greater if they had met in a ditch on equal terms of intoxication.

“What think, deacon,” he gurgled. “I was dream-in' las' night, 'bout Joppa comin' down my chimney, damned if he did n't.”

The deacon stopped and faced him.

“You may be drunk, sir,” he said slowly, “on Saturday night, and you may curse on the Sabbath; but you may not expect me to sympathize with you—in either.”

Then Tim Rae slunk away foreshortened of stature and cold in the stomach.

Monday morning was the first of May; and on May-day, unless the season were backward and without early flowers, the children of Hagar would go after ground-pine for the May-baskets, and trailing arbutus to fill them with. They would hang the baskets on the door-handles of those who were thought worthy, popular persons such as the minister and Sandy Campbell; on Mr. Atherton Bell's door-handle on account of Bobby Bell, who was a gentleman but not allowed to be out nights because of his inferior age.

Ground-pine grows in many places, but early arbutus is a whimsical flower, as shy as first love. It is nearly always to be found somewhere in the South Woods. And the South Woods are to be reached, not by Scrabble Up and Down, but along the Windless Mountain Road, across the Mill Stream, and by cart-paths which know not their own minds.

The deacon drove home from Gilead Monday afternoon, and saw the children noisily jumping the Mill Stream where the line of bowlders dams up the stream and makes deep quiet water above. Their voices, quarrelling and laughing, fell on his ear with an unfamiliar sound. Somehow they seemed significant, at least suggesting odd trains of thought. He found himself imagining how it would seem to go Maying; and the incongruity of it brought a sudden frown of mental pain and confusion to his forehead. And so he drove into Hagar.

But if he had followed the May-day revellers, as he had oddly imagined himself doing, he would have gone by those winding cart-paths, fragrant with early growth, and might have seen the children break from the woods with shouts into a small opening above a sunken pond; he might even have heard the voice of Angelica Flint rise in shrill excitement:

“Why, there's Joppa!”

Some minutes after six, the first shading of the twilight being in the air, the villagers of Hagar, whose houses lay along the north and south road, rose on one impulse and came forth into the street. And standing by their gates and porches, they saw the children go by with lost Joppa in their midst. Around his neck was a huge flopping wreath of ground-pine and arbutus. The arbutus did not stay in very well, and there was little of it—only bits stuck in here and there. Joppa hung his head low, so that the wreath had to be held on. He did not seem cheerful; in fact, the whole cortÈge had a subdued though important air, as if oppressed by a great thought and conscious of ceremony.

The minister and the other neighbors along the street came out and followed. Some dozen or more at last stood on the brow of the slight hill looking down to the deacon's house; and they too felt conscious of something, of a ceremony, a suspense.

Mr. Atherton Bell met the children and drove his buggy into the ditch, stood up and gazed over the back of it with an absorbed look.

“I feel curious how the deacon will take it,” said the minister. “I—I feel anxious.”

Mr. Atherton Bell said, it got him. He said something too about “dramatic interest” and “a good betting chance he'll cut up rough”; but no one answered him.

The procession halted outside the deacon's gate. A tendency to giggle on the part of certain girls was sternly suppressed by Angelica Flint. Willy Flint led Joppa cautiously up the board walk and tied him to a pillar of the porch; the company began to retreat irregularly.

Suddenly the deacon, tall and black-coated, stood in the doorway, Mrs. Crockett at his elbow pouring forth exclamations; and the retreat became a flight. Little Nettie Paulus fell behind; she stood in the middle of the road and wailed piteously.

The deacon glared at Joppa and Joppa's grotesque necklace, looked after the fleeing children and saw on the brow of the hill the group of his fellow-townsmen. His forehead flushed and he hesitated. At last he took the wreath awkwardly from Joppa's neck, went into the house and shut the door. The wreath hung in his front window seven months, and fell to pieces about the end of November. Joppa died long after of old age and rheumatism.