wn.'

"'I'll resk it.'

"'Yes; but who'll resk the lives of me and my men?'

"'O, you'll see if it's re'ly goin' to tumble, and look out. I'll engage
't me and my boys'll do the most dangerous part of the work. Dumbed if
I wouldn't agree to ride in the steeple and ring the bell if there was
one.'

"I've never heard that the promised notices were read from the pulpits;
but it wasn't many days before Bob came over again, bringing with him
this time his screws and ropes and rollers, his men and timbers, horse
and capstan; and at last the old house might have been seen on its
travels.

"It was an exciting time all around. The societies found that Jedwort's
fence gave him the first claim to house and land unless a regular siege
of the law was gone through to beat him off--and then it might turn out
that he would beat them. Some said fight him; some said let him be--the
thing a'n't worth going to law for; and so, as the leading men couldn't
agree as to what should be done, nothing was done. That was just what
Jedwort had expected, and he laughed in his sleeve while Bob and his
boys screwed up the old meeting-house, and got their beams under it, and
set it on rollers, and slued it around, and slid it on the timbers laid
for it across into Jedwort's field, steeple foremost, like a locomotive
on a track.

"It was a trying time for the women folks at home. Maria had declared
that, if her father did persist in stealing the meeting-house, she would
not stay a single day after it, but would follow Dave.

"That touched me pretty close, for, to tell the truth, it was rather
more Maria than her mother that kept me at work for the old man. 'If you
go,' says I, 'then there is no object for me to stay; I shall go too.'

"'That's what I supposed,' says she; 'for there's no reason in the world
why you should stay. But then Dan will go; and who'll be left to take
sides with mother? That's what troubles me. Oh, if she could only
go too! But she won't; and she couldn't if she would, with the other
children depending on her. Dear, dear! what shall we do?'

"The poor girl put her head on my shoulder, and cried; and if I should
own up to the truth, I suppose I cried a little too. For where's the man
that can hold a sweet woman's head on his shoulder, while she sobs out
her trouble, and he hasn't any power to help her--who, I say, can do any
less, under such circumstances, than drop a tear or two for company?

"'Never mind; don't hurry