Fibble, D.D.

"Young feller," continued the elderly man, fixing his glaring eyes full on me, "before we go any farther with this little job, would you mind tellin' me, jest for curiosity, whut you was doin' jest now down on that there sofa pillow?"

In this matter, at least, I could have no wish or intent to deceive him.

"Sir, I was taking a swimming lesson," I said with simple courtesy.

"A which?" he said as though not hearing me aright.

"A swimming lesson," I repeated plainly, or as plainly as I could considering my agitation and the fact that the cold in my head had noticeably thickened my utterance, making it well-nigh impossible for me to give the proper inflection to certain of the aspirates and penultimates.

"Oh, yes," he said; "I see – a – a – swimming lesson. Well, that certainly is a mighty cute idee."

"I am glad you agree with me," I said. "And now, my good fellows, if you have any business of your own to attend to – elsewhere – I should be more than pleased if you proceeded on your way and left me undisturbed. I have much to engage my mind at present, as you may have noted."

"Oh, there ain't no hurry," he said. "I figger we'll all be goin' away from here purty soon."

At this moment the son checked his advance and, stooping, raised aloft the same earthenware vessel of which repeated mention has heretofore been made.

"Here she is, all right, dad!" was his cryptic statement. "I guess we never made no mistake in comin' here."

The father then addressed me.

"Mister," he said, "mout I enquire where you got that there crock?"

"That, my good sir," I informed him, "is not a crock. It is a Mound Builder's relic, unearthed but yesterday in the forest primeval."

"In the forest which?"

"The forest primeval," I enunciated with all the distinctness of which I was capable.

"And whut, if anythin', have you been doin' with it beside anointin' them features of yourn in it?" Again it was the father who spoke.

"It formerly contained wild strawberries," I answered, "some of which were consumed for food, and the rest of which were carried away under cover of nightfall by a bear."

He stared at me.

"A bear?" he reiterated blankly.

"Certainly," I said; "undoubtedly a bear – I myself saw it. A large, dark bear."

"And whut about this here?" he continued, now beholding for the first time the remaining woodcock, which hung from the limb of a low tree, and pointing toward it. "Is that there a Mound Builder's chicken?"

"Assuredly not," I said. "That is a white woodcock. There was also a black woodcock, presumably a mate of this one; but it – it has been disposed of. The pair were slain yesterday with bow and arrow in the adjacent depths of the woodland, which is their customary habitat."

You will note that I constantly refrained from mentioning my youthful compatriots. Did I dare reveal that I had companions, and by so doing expose those helpless lads to the unbridled fury of these maniacal beings, filled with the low cunning and insatiable curiosity of the insane? No; a thousand times, no! Rather would I perish first. At all hazards I would protect them – such was my instantaneous determination.

"I git you," replied the bearded man, his tone and manner changing abruptly from the truculent and threatening to the soothing. "You was takin' a private lesson in plain and fancy swimmin' on a pink sofa cushion; and that there ancient and honourable milk crock was willed to you by the Mound-buildin' Aztecs; and a big bear come in the night and et up your wild strawberries – which was a great pity, too, seein' they're worth thirty cents a quart right this minute on the New York market; and you killed them two pedigreed Leghorn woodcocks with a bow and arrows in the forest – the forest whutever you jest now called it. Jest whut are you, anyway?"

"By profession I am a clergyman," I answered.

"And do all the members of your persuasion wear them little sailor suits or is it confined to the preachers only?" he demanded.

I gathered that this coarse reference applied to my attire.

"This," I told him, "is the uniform or garb of an organisation known as the Young Nuts of America. I am the Chief Nut."

"I can't take issue with you here," he said with a raucous laugh. "And now, Chief, jest one thing more: Would you mind tellin' us whut your aim was in holdin' your nose over that there brush fire a bit ago?"

"My head has been giving me some trouble," I said. "I was curing myself with the aid of the smoke."

"One minute a nut and the next minute a ham," he murmured, half to himself. Dropping his pitchfork, he stretched his hands toward me. "I s'pose," he added, "it ain't no use to ask you when you got out?"

In a flash it came to me – I had often read that the victims of a certain form of mania imagined all others to be insane. My plain and straightforward answers to his vague and rambling interrogations had failed of the desired effect. Being themselves mad, they thought me mad. It was a horrifying situation.

I rose to my feet – I had been kneeling throughout this extraordinary interview – with a confused thought of eluding their clutches and fleeing from them. In imagination I already saw my murdered form hidden in the trackless wilds.

"No, you don't!" exclaimed the whiskered man, placing violent and detaining hands on me. "That's all right," he continued, as the son closed in on me: "I kin handle the little killdee by myself… Now, sonny," he went on, again directing himself to me as I struggled and writhed, helpless in his grasp, "you come along with me!"

"Hold on!" called the son. "There's a lot of other stuff here – blankets and truck. He's been makin' quite a collection."

"Never mind," bade his parent, roughly turning me about and from behind propelling my resisting form violently forward. "I reckin they was gifts from the Mound Builders, too. We'll come back later on and sort out the plunder."

As I was shoved along I endeavoured to explain. I exclaimed; I cried out; I entreated them to stop and to hearken. My pleadings were of no avail and, I am constrained to believe, would have been of no avail even had not distress and agitation rendered me to an extent incoherent. My abductors only urged me onward through the woods at great speed.

"Gee! Hear him rave, dad!" I heard the son pant from behind me.

Merciful Providence! Now their warped and perverted mentalities translated my speech into ravings!

Almost immediately, as it seemed to me, we emerged from the forest into a ploughed field; and but a short distance away I beheld a human domicile – in short, a farmhouse. Filled with sudden relief when I realised that a civilised habitation stood in such hitherto unsuspected proximity to our late camping place, and instantly possessed with a great and uncontrollable craving to reach this haven of refuge and claim the protection of its inhabitants, I wrested myself free from the bearded man with one mighty effort, leaving my flowing collar in his hands, and at top speed set off across the field, crying out as I ran: "Help! Help! Succour! Assistance!" or words to that effect.

My flight continued but a few yards. I was overtaken and felled to the earth, my captors thereupon taking steps to effectually restrain me in the free exercise of my limbs and bodily movements. This being one of the most acutely distressing features of the entire experience I shall forego further details, merely stating that they used a rope.

It was at this juncture that the powers of connected thought and lucid speech deserted me. I retain an indistinct recollection of being borne bodily into a farm dwelling, of being confronted by a gaunt female who, disregarding my frantic efforts to explain all, persisted in listening only to the rambling accounts of my abductors, and who, on hearing from them their confused version of what had transpired, retreated to a distance and refused to venture nearer until my bonds had been reinforced with a strap.

Following this I recall vaguely being given to drink of a glass containing milk – milk of a most peculiar odour and pungent taste. Plainly this milk had been drugged; for though in my then state of mind I was already bordering on delirium, yet an instant after swallowing the draught my faculties were miraculously restored to me. I spoke rationally – indeed, convincingly; but, owing to an unaccountable swelling of my tongue, due no doubt to the effects of the drug, my remarks to the biased ears of those about me must have sounded inarticulate, not to say incoherent. However, I persisted in my efforts to be understood until dizziness and a great languor overcame me entirely.

A blank ensued – I must have swooned.

I shall now draw this painful narrative to a close, dismissing with merely a few lines those facts that in a garbled form have already reached the public eye through the medium of a ribald and disrespectful press – how my youthful companions, returning betimes to our camping place and finding me gone, and finding also abundant signs of a desperate struggle, hastened straightway to return home by the first train to spread the tidings that I had been kidnapped; how search was at once instituted; how, late that same evening, after running down various vain clues, my superior, the Reverend Doctor Tubley, arrived at Hatchersville aboard a special train, accompanied by a volunteer posse of his parishioners and other citizens and rescued me, semi-delirious and still fettered, as my captors were on the point of removing me, a close prisoner, to the Branch State Asylum for the Insane at Pottsburg, twenty miles distant, in the deluded expectation of securing a reward for my apprehension; of how explanations were vouchsafed, showing that while I, with utter justification, had regarded them as lunatics, they, in their ignorance and folly, had, on the other hand, regarded me as being mentally afflicted; and how finally, being removed by careful hands to my place of residence, I remained a constant invalid, in great mental and bodily distress, for a period of above a fortnight.

As is well known, my first act on being restored to health was to resign the assistant rectorship of St. Barnabas'. And having meantime been offered the chair of history and astronomy at Fernbridge Seminary for Young Ladies at Lover's Leap in the State of New Jersey I have accepted and am departing on the morrow for my new post, trusting, in the classic shades and congenial atmosphere of that well-established academy of learning, to forget the unhappy memories now indissolubly associated in my mind with the first and last camping expedition of the Young Nuts of America.

I close with an added word of gratitude and affection for those five gallant lads, Masters Horrigan, Pope, Ferguson, E. Smith and H. Smith – but particularly Master Pope, to whom I feel I indeed owe much.

    (Signed) Very respectfully,
    Roscoe Titmarsh Fibble, D.D.

PART TWO