Chapter 8

At the breakfast-table the next morning, however, appeared Doctor
Grimshawe, wearing very much the same aspect of an uncombed, unshorn,
unbrushed, odd sort of a pagan as at other times, and making no
difference in his breakfast, except that he poured a pretty large dose
of brandy into his cup of tea; a thing, however, by no means unexampled
or very unusual in his history. There were also the two children,
fresher than the morning itself, rosy creatures, with newly scrubbed
cheeks, made over again for the new day, though the old one had left no
dust upon them;[Endnote: 1] laughing with one another, flinging their
little jokes about the table, and expecting that the Doctor might, as
was often his wont, set some ponderous old English joke trundling round
among the breakfast cups; eating the corn-cakes which crusty Hannah,
with the aboriginal part of her, had a knack of making in a peculiar
and exquisite fashion. But there was an empty chair at table; one cup,
one little jug of milk, and another of pure water, with no guest to
partake of them.

"Where is the schoolmaster?" said Ned, pausing as he was going to take
his seat.

"Yes, Doctor Grim?" said little Elsie.

"He has overslept himself for once," quoth Doctor Grim gruffly; "a
strange thing, too, for a man whose victuals and drink are so light as
the schoolmaster's. The fiend take me if I thought he had mortal mould
enough in him ever to go to sleep at all; though he is but a kind of
dream-stuff in his widest-awake state. Hannah, you bronze jade, call
the schoolmaster to come to breakfast."

Hannah departed on her errand, and was heard knocking at the door of
the schoolmaster's chamber several times, till the Doctor shouted to
her wrathfully to cease her clatter and open the door at once, which
she appeared to do, and speedily came back.

"He no there, massa. Schoolmaster melted away!"

"Vanished like a bubble!" quoth the Doctor.

"The great spider caught him like a fly," quoth crusty Hannah,
chuckling with a sense of mischief that seemed very pleasant to her
strange combination.

"He has taken a morning walk," said little Ned; "don't you think so,
Doctor Grim?"

"Yes," said the grim Doctor. "Go on with your breakfast, little monkey;
the walk may be a long one, or he is so slight a weight that the wind
may blow him overboard."

A very long walk it proved; or it might be that some wind, whether evil
or good, had blown him, as the Doctor suggested, into parts unknown;
for, from that time forth, the Yankee schoolmaster returned no more. It
was a singular disappearance.

The bed did not appear to