is head,
but hoed on. An' she went down thar 'mongst the corn, an' she couldn't
find nobody. An' jes then the John's boys rid up an' 'lowed ez Jim
Peters war dead, an' hed been fund in the mounting, an' they war
a-fetchin' of him then."

The horse's head within the window nodded violently among the shadows,
and the stones rolled beneath his hoof as he pawed the ground.

"Mis' Peters she knowed suthin' were a-goin' ter happen when she seen
that harnt a-hoein'."

"I reckon she did," said the blacksmith, stretching himself, his nerves
still under the delusion of recent awakening. "Jim never hoed none when
he war alive. She mought hev knowed he war dead ef she seen him hoein'."

"Waal, sir," exclaimed the violinist, "I'm a-goin' up yander ter
Purdee's ter-morrer ter find out what he died of, an' when."

That he was alive was proved the next day, to the astonishment of the
smith and his friends. The forge was the voting-place of the district,
and there, while the fire was flaring, the bellows blowing, the anvil
ringing, the echo vibrating, now loud, now faint, with the antiphonal
chant of the hammer and the sledge, a notice was posted to inform the
adjacent owners that Roger Purdee's land, held under an original grant
from the State, would be processioned according to law some twenty days
after date, and the boundaries thereof defined and established. The
fac-simile of the notice, too, was posted on the court-house door in the
county town twenty miles away, for there were those who journeyed so far
to see it.

"I wonder," said the blacksmith, as he stood in the unfamiliar street
and gazed at it, his big arms, usually bare, now hampered with his coat
sleeves and folded upon his chest--"I wonder ef he footed it all the
way ter town at the gait he tuk when he lit out from the forge?"

It was a momentous day when the county surveyor planted his
Jacob's-staff upon the State line on the summit of the bald. His sworn
chain-bearers, two tall young fellows clad in jeans, with broad-brimmed
wool hats, their heavy boots drawn high over their trousers, stood ready
and waiting, with the sticks and clanking chain, on the margin of the
ice-cold spring gushing out on this bleak height, and signifying
more than a fountain in the wilderness, since it served to define the
southeast corner of Purdee's land. The two enemies were perceptibly
conscious of each other. Grinnell's broad face and small eyes laden
with fat lids were persistentl