192 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



get for her when he went by early that morning. Few 

 can be ill along the road without Tom knowing it, and 

 not many without his learning, too, what brand of med- 

 icine they are taking. Mrs. Sanborn has cramps, which 

 is an extremely euphonious way of stating a desire for 

 alcoholic stimulation, equally euphoniously supplied by 

 Jamaica ginger. Mrs. Sanborn strongly disapproves of 

 the cider drinking which goes on in the rural regions, 

 especially of the custom, hallowed by tradition, of letting 

 a barrel of hard cider freeze almost solid and then, 

 on a winter night, boring a hole into the heart of the ice 

 cake and extracting the highly stimulating unfrozen 

 core. But Mrs. Sanborn's secret remains compara- 

 tively secure with Tom and the village druggist. "Live 

 and let live" is still the motto in a land of individualists. 

 Tom is generally whistling again by the time he 

 reaches the top of the long trail and enters the deep 

 woods on the summit plateau. But his whistle ceases 

 as the horse's hoofs sound less metallic on the damper 

 ground, or in Autumn swish and thud softly through the 

 fallen leaves. Here in these woods, where the sunlight 

 is dappled gold and there are dim green vistas, Tom 

 likes to drive slowly, enjoying the cool shadows in 

 Summer, the hushed, windless calm in Winter, and only 

 in Spring annoyed by the frost holes and black, mucky 

 ruts. Here he sometimes surprises a deer, which 

 bounds away through the forest, and almost daily a 

 rabbit or two scamper across his path, or a partridge 



