[344]
sort of compartment like a cupboard, into which he put his hand, and then looked round bewildered, saying, “The watch is gone.”
They took the lad at once to the fireside, and left him gazing in. He presently, said, “I see the watch; it has been put under a pile of chips in the yard of a house.”
He described the house so that it was recognized, went with them to the yard, showed the pile of chips, and there they found the watch.
The house was the abode of a young woman who had worked in the dwelling from which the watch had been lost.
These wonders have continued at intervals up to the present year; the family making no trade of it, and the boy receiving for his services whatever the applicant may choose to give.
This very summer a child was lost from Haverhill, New Hampshire, and the woods were searched for him far and near; some friends came to D to inquire.
Looking in the fire, as usual, he said, “I see him lying by a brook, almost dead,” and described the brook.
That night a violent storm occurred; and going to the brook in the morning, they found it much swollen, and the lifeless body of the boy was found in the Connecticut River, just below the brook.
In this case a large reward (five hundred dollars) had been offered for news of the lost child, and ten dollars were paid to the diviner.
The boy is now sixteen or seventeen years old, and of rather dull aspect; the parents are poor, he has had little reading or instruction, and has scarcely ever been away from home, and the stories I give, which I have set down carefully from the narrative of people who know the child, in whom they inspire only a vague
