PETER CJOFF, THE MAN WITH HIS MOUTH OPEN. 193 



got into a strange way about that time, imagining that somebody 

 was going to eat him up alive. He could not abide any one with a 

 large mouth, and whenever he saw Peter he used to feel a special fit 

 of the horrors ; so you may suppose it must have been a pretty con- 

 siderable shock to his nerves, when in the dead of the night he was 

 roused out of bed by a thundering knock at the door, and going down 

 with a light to behold Peter with his big mouth stretched wide open 

 to devour him. Mercy on us ! he jumped back about a rod and a 

 half, and then, in his desperation, catching up a broomstick, he went 

 at him with such a mauling that he was glad to save himself at full 

 gallop, and got off with an open mouth and a shirt full of sore bones ! 

 Well, his only course now was to make for the next town, where 

 there was another doctor ; so away he went, though it was a good 

 distance. By and by the moon went down, and it was pitch dark. 

 He lost his way, and wandered hither and thither without meeting a 

 living soul. There was nobody abroad, and the only house he saw 

 was inhabited by an old woman who was always afraid of seeing 

 ghosts ; and when Peter tried to get admission, the old woman was 

 so frightened that she cried murder ! thieves ! hobgoblins ! and 

 Peter, fearing he should be shot in the head for a robber or wizard, 

 made his retreat as quick as he could." 



" With his mouth open all the time ?" 



C( Certainly. So the story goes, and no doubt of the fact, for the 

 night was so cold that it must have been hard work to move a man's 

 jaws any way. Uncle Josh remembers the time ; he was in the 1 

 army that season, and many was the morning in camp that he could 

 not get up for two hours after he was awake, because his old queue 

 had froze fast to the ground ! 



" Well, Peter went on, but could not tell which way he was going. 

 It was dark as pitch, as I said before, and he had got into a lonely 

 part of the country ; there was no fence to the road, and he soon 

 found himself rambling over the fields, scaring the owls, and fright- 

 ening himself with the expectation of breaking his neck among the 

 ups and downs that gave him a jolt and a bounce every ten steps. 

 After he had well battered the shins of his horse across the ditches 

 and stone walls, he found himself upon the river. It was frozen, 

 pretty hard ; but presently he came to an air-hole, and souse ! he 

 tumbled in ! After floundering about some time, he was lucky enough 

 to pick himself out, horse and all : indeed 'twas the horse that saved 

 him, according to the best authorities. Peter and his horse got 

 upon dry land again which of them swallowed the most water du- 

 ring the accident I'll not say, as I was not there to see, but I rather 

 think it was Peter. Well, they got upon dry land, as I said ; but 

 they were neither dry nor thirsty, you may suppose. It w_as terrible 

 cold, as I said before, and Peter would have froze to death if he had 

 not been as tough as a pine-knot. But uncle Josh always said there 

 was no killing him. Peter and his horse were soaking wet, and so in 

 less than half an hour he found every rag of clothes about him as 

 hard as horn, in short, he had frozen to the horse's back, and could 

 riot move a limb, any more than if he had been hewed out of a block 

 of stone ! There he sat as stiff as a poker. The horse gallopped on. 



M.M. No. 2. C 



