Chapter 14 - Page 2

had a loud and notable voice. At length, in the
war of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by English soldiers,
prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and hens
were all burned up together. She led a hard life, and somewhat
inhumane. One old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he
passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to herself over her
gurgling pot -- "Ye are all bones, bones!" I have seen bricks amid
the oak copse there.
Down the road, on the right hand, on Brister's Hill, lived
Brister Freeman, "a handy Negro," slave of Squire Cummings once --
there where grow still the apple trees which Brister planted and
tended; large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish
to my taste. Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln
burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of
some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord --
where he is styled "Sippio Brister" -- Scipio Africanus he had some
title to be called -- "a man of color," as if he were discolored.
It also told me, with staring emphasis, when he died; which was but
an indirect way of informing me that he ever lived. With him dwelt
Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly --
large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night,
such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since.
Farther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the
woods, are marks of some homestead of the Stratton family; whose
orchard once covered all the slope of Brister's Hill, but was long
since killed out by pitch pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old
roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty village tree.
Nearer yet to town, you come to Breed's location, on the other
side of the way, just on the edge of the wood; ground famous for the
pranks of a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has
acted a prominent and astounding part in our New England life, and
deserves, as much as any mythological character, to have his
biography written one day; who first comes in the guise of a friend
or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family --
New-England Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies
enacted here; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend
an azure tint to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious
tradition says that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which
tempered the traveller's beverage and refreshed his steed. Here
then men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and went
their ways again.
Breed's hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had
long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It was set on
fire by mischievous boys, one Election night,