uld stop at the very fust house we come to. Dea'! The'e don't
seem to be any houses, any moa." She peered out around the side of the
carry-all and scrutinized the landscape. "Hold on! No, yes it is, too!
Whoa! Whoa! The'e's a man in that hay-field, now!"

She laid hold of the reins and pulled the horse to a stand. Mr. Lander
looked round over his shoulder at her. "Hadn't you betta wait till you
get within half a mile of the man?"

"Well, I want you should stop when you do git to him. Will you? I want to
speak to him, and ask him all about those folks."

"I didn't suppose you'd let me have much of a chance," said her husband.
When he came within easy hail of the man in the hay-field, he pulled up
beside the meadow-wall, where the horse began to nibble the blackberry
vines that overran it.

Mrs. Lander beckoned and called to the man, who had stopped pitching hay
and now stood leaning on the handle of his fork. At the signs and sounds
she made, he came actively forward to the road, bringing his fork with
him. When he arrived within easy conversational distance, he planted the
tines in the ground and braced himself at an opposite incline from the
long smooth handle, and waited for Mrs. Lander to begin.

"Will you please tell us who those folks ah', livin' back there in the
edge of the woods, in that new unfinished house?"

The man released his fork with one hand to stoop for a head of timothy
that had escaped the scythe, and he put the stem of it between his teeth,
where it moved up and down, and whipped fantastically about as he talked,
before he answered, "You mean the Claxons?"

"I don't know what thei' name is." Mrs. Lander repeated exactly what she
had said.

The farmer said, "Long, red-headed man, kind of sickly-lookin'?"

"We didn't see the man--"

"Little woman, skinny-lookin; pootty tonguey?"

"We didn't see her, eitha; but I guess we hea'd her at the back of the
house."

"Lot o' children, about as big as pa'tridges, runnin' round in the
bushes?"

"Yes! And a very pretty-appearing girl; about thi'teen or fou'teen, I
should think."

The farmer pulled his fork out of the ground, and planted it with his
person at new slopes in the figure of a letter A, rather more upright
than before. "Yes; it's them," he said. "Ha'n't been in the neighbahood a
great while, eitha. Up from down Po'tland way, some'res, I guess. Built
that house last summer, as far as it's got, but I don't believe it's
goin' to git much