CHAPTER XVI 



STRAMONIUM 



IN our purposeless wandering over roads that 

 led nowhere, the Doctor and I came at last to 

 some discomfort that is to say, it would 

 have been discomfort but for the Doctor. We 

 had trudged along the whole afternoon, stopping 

 to get a drink of buttermilk at a small dairy over 

 a brook, and there the Doctor, fascinated by the 

 rolls of fresh butter, had bought half a pound, and 

 the buxom dairymaid had rolled it up in two or 

 three cool cabbage leaves. As we came along the 

 road, and I saw him carrying that bundle carefully 

 in his hand, I asked him what he expected to do 

 with it ; whereupon he asked me to hold it a moment 

 and went off into a near-by field, where I saw him 

 bent over, kicking and scratching as if in search 

 of something. When he came back he had three 

 or four good-sized potatoes, which he exhibited 

 with unbounded admiration, and insisted on wash 

 ing them off at the first rivulet we encountered. 



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