/> doors instead of opening them, bite tenpenny nails in two, and curse his

wig off In the autumn of 1770 he visited Concord, with his little girl,

and on the way home was overtaken by a violent storm. He took shelter

with a friend at Menotomy, who urged him to stay all night, for the rain

was falling heavier every moment; but Rugg would not be stayed, and

seeing that there was no hope of a dry journey back to town he roared a

fearful oath and cried, Let the storm increase. I will see home to-night

in spite of it, or may I never see home! With that he tossed the child

into the open chaise, leaped in after her, lashed his horse, and was off.



Several nights afterward, while Rugg's neighbors were out with lanterns

trying to discover the cause of a heavy jarring that had begun to disturb

them in bad weather, the excitable gentleman, who had not been seen since

his Concord visit, came whirling along the pavement in his carriage, his

daughter beside him, his black horse plunging on in spite of his efforts

to stop him. The lanterns that for a moment twinkled in Peter's face

showed him as a wet and weary man, with eyes turned up longingly at the

windows where his wife awaited him; then he was gone, and the ground

trembled as with an earthquake, while the rain fell more heavily.



Mrs. Rugg died within a twelvemonth, and Peter never reached home, but

from all parts of New England came stories of a man and child driving

rapidly along the highways, never stopping except to inquire the way to

Boston. Half of the time the man would be headed in a direction opposite

to the one he seemed to want to follow, and when set right would cry that

he was being deceived, and was sometimes heard to mutter, No home

to-night. In Hartford, Providence, Newburyport, and among the New

Hampshire hills the anxious face of the man became known, and he was

referred to as the stormbreeder, for so surely as he passed there would

be rain, wind, lightning, thunder, and darkness within the hour.



Some years ago a man in a Connecticut town stopped this hurrying

traveller, who said, in reply to a question, I have lost the road to



Boston. My name is Peter Rugg. Then Rugg's disappearance half a century

before was cited by those who had long memories, and people began to look

askant at Peter and gave him generous road room when they met him. The

toll-taker on Charlestown bridge declared that he had been annoyed and

alarmed by a prodigious tramping of hoofs and rattling of wheels that

seemed to pass toward Boston before his very face, yet he could see

nothing. He took courage one night to plant himself in the middle of the

bridge with a three-legged stool, and when the sound approached he dimly

saw a large black horse driven by a weary looking man with a child beside

him. The stool was flung at the horse's head, but passed through the

animal as through smoke and skipped across the floor of the bridge. Thus

much the toll-collector said, but when asked if Rugg had appeared again

he made no reply.