He remembered the
horseman riding at him, and his firing the pistol; but whether he was
alive, and these walls around him belonged to the village of Rockland,
or whether he had passed the dark river, and was in a suburb of the New
Jerusalem, he could not as yet have told.
They were in the street where the Doctor's house was situated.
"I guess I'll fire off one o' these here berrils," said Abel.
He fired.
Presently there was a noise of opening windows, and the nocturnal
headdresses of Rockland flowered out of them like so many developments
of the Night-blooming Cereus. White cotton caps and red bandanna
handkerchiefs were the prevailing forms of efflorescence. The main point
was that the village was waked up. The old Doctor always waked easily,
from long habit, and was the first among those who looked out to see
what had happened.
"Why, Abel!" he called out, "what have you got there? and what's all
this noise about?"
"We've ketched the Portagee!" Abel answered, as laconically as the hero
of Lake Erie in his famous dispatch.
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