the shadowy
coves near the shore and the beaver built his huts near by. The red
deer came down to dip his antlers and cool his flanks in the still
shallows. The speckled grouse sat on her nest in the low pine boughs,
while her mate perched on the mossy logs by the riverside unmolested.

The Sokokis built their bark wigwams here and there on the bank,
paddling their birch canoes over the river's smooth surface, or
threading the foamy torrents farther down its course.

Here was the wonderful spring that fed, and still feeds, Aunt Judy's
Brook, the most turbulent little stream in the county. Many a moccasin
track has been made in the soft earth around the never-failing
fountain, and many the wooden bucket lowered into its crystal depths
by the Dalton Righters when in their turn they possessed the land.

The day of the Indian was over now, and the day of the farmer who
succeeded him was over, too. The crash of the loom and the whir of the
spinning-wheel were heard no longer, but Amanda Dalton,
spinster,--descendant of the original Tristram Dalton, to whom the
claim belonged,--sat on alone in her house, and not far away sat Caleb
Kimball, sole living heir of the original Caleb, himself a Dalton
Righter, and contemporary of Tristram Dalton.

Neither of these personages took any interest in pedigree or
genealogy. They knew that their ancestors had lived and died on the
same acres now possessed by them, but the acres had dwindled sadly,
and the ancestors had seemingly left little for which to be grateful.
Indeed, in Caleb's case they had been a distinct disadvantage, since
the local sense of humor, proverbially strong in York County, had
always preserved a set of Kimball stories among its most cherished
possessions. Some of them might have been forgotten in the century and
a half that had elapsed, if the Caleb of our story had not been the
inheritor of certain family traits famous in their day and
generation.

Caleb the first had been the "cuss" of his fellow farmers, because in
coming from Scarboro to join the Dalton Righters he had brought
whiteweed with the bundle of hay for his cattle when he was clearing
the land. The soil of this particular region must have been especially
greedy for, and adapted to, this obnoxious grass-killer, for it
flourished as in no other part of the county; flourishes yet,
indeed--though, if one can forget that its presence means poor feed
for cattle where might be a crop of juicy hay, the b