hem, one after the other. I
thought he wanted me to notice his apple seeds, and inquired how many
kinds he carried. So he showed them in handfuls, brown and glistening,
or gummed with the sweet blood of cider. These produced pippins; these
produced russets; these produced luscious harvest apples, that fell in
August bursting with juicy ripeness. Then he showed me another bagful
which were not apple seeds at all, but neutral colored specks moving
with fluid swiftness as he poured them from palm to palm.

"Do you know what this is?"

I told him I didn't.

"It's dogfennel seed."

I laughed, and asked him what kind of apples it bore.

Johnny Appleseed smiled at me again.

"It's a flower. I'm spreading it over the whole of Ohio and Indiana!
It'll come up like the stars for abundance, and fill the land with
rankness, and fever and ague will flee away!"

"But how about the rankness?"

"Fever and ague will flee away," he repeated, continuing his search
through the bags.

He next brought out a parcel, wrapped up carefully in doeskin to protect
it from the appleseeds; and turned foolish in the face, as bits of
ribbon and calico fell out upon his knees.

"This isn't the one," he said, bundling it up and thrusting it back
again. "The little girls, they like to dress their doll-babies, so I
carry patches for the little girls. Here's what I was looking for."

It was another doeskin parcel, bound lengthwise and crosswise by thongs.
These Johnny Appleseed reverently loosened, bringing forth a small book
with wooden covers fastened by a padlock.

III

"Where did you get this?" I heard myself asking, a strange voice
sounding far down the throat.

"From an Indian," the mystic told me quietly. "He said it was bad
medicine to him. He never had any luck in hunting after it fell to his
share, so he was glad to give it to me."

"Where did he get it?"

"His tribe took it from some prisoners they killed."

I was running blindly around in a circle to find relief from the news he
dealt me, when the absurdity of such news overtook me. I stood and
laughed.

"Who were the prisoners?"

"I don't know," answered Johnny Appleseed.

"How do you know the Indians killed them?"

"The one that gave me this book told me so."

"There are plenty of padlocked books in the world," I said jauntily. "At
least there must be more than one. How long ago did it happen?"

"Not very long ago, I think; for the book was clean."

"Giv