DANNY'S OWN STORY BY DON MARQUIS TO MY ... - Pink Monkey

I asts her what kind of a something. I make out
from what she says it is some like these fellers that
can find water with a piece of witch hazel switch.
You take a switch of it between your thumbs and
point it up. Then you shut your eyes and walk
backwards. When you get over where the water
is the witch hazel stick twists around and points
to the ground. You dig there and you get a good
well. Nobody knows jest why that stick is drawed
to the ground. It is like one of these little whirlygig
compasses is drawed to the north. It is the
same, Martha says, if you is on a quest fur a
father or a mother, only you have got to be
worthy of that there quest, she says. The
first time you meet the right one you are
drawed jest like the witch hazel. That is the
Intangible Something working on you, she says.
Martha had learnt a lot about that. The book
that had fell in the crick was like that. She lent
it to me.
Well, that all sounded kind of reasonable to me.
I seen that witch hazel work myself. Old Blindy
Wolfe, whose eyes had been dead fur so many
years they had turned plumb white, had that gift,
and picked out all the places fur wells that was dug
in our neighbourhood at home. And I makes up
my mind I will watch out fur that feeling of being
drawed wherever I goes after this. You can't tell
what will come of them kind of things. So purty soon
Martha has to milk the cow, and I goes along back
to camp thinking about that quest and about what
a purty girl she is, which we had set there talking
so long it was nigh sundown and my clothes had
dried onto me.
When I got over to camp I seen they must be
something wrong. Looey was setting in the grass
under the wagon looking kind of sour and kind of
worried and watching the doctor. The doctor
was jest inside the tent, and he was looking queer
too, and not cheerful, which he was usually.
The doctor looks at me like he don't skeercly
know me. Which he don't. He has one of them