solitude, some fevered condition of the blood or the brain, that had
traced on the stone those gracious words, the mere echo of which--his
stuttered, vague recollections--had roused the camp-meeting to
fervid enthusiasms undreamed of before. And then he put from him the
project--some other time, perhaps, for doubts lurked in his heart,
hesitation chilled his resolve--some other time, when his companions and
their prosaic influence were all far away. He was roused abruptly, as he
stalked along, to the perception of the deepening excitement among them.
They had emerged from the dense growths of the mountain to the
lower slope, where pastures and fields--whence the grain had been
harvested--and a garden and a dwelling, with barns and fences, lay
before them all. And as Purdee stopped and stared, the realization of a
certain significant fact struck him so suddenly that it seemed to take
his breath away. That divergent line stretching to the northwest had
left within his boundaries the land on which his enemy had built his
home.

He looked; then he smote his thigh and laughed aloud.

The rocks on the river-bank caught the sound, and echoed it again and
again, till the air seemed full of derisive voices. Under their stings
of jeering clamor, and under the anguish of the calamity which his
reeling senses could scarcely measure, Job Grinnell's composure suddenly
gave way. He threw up his arms and called upon Heaven; he turned and
glared furiously at his enemy. Then, as Purdee's laughter still jarred
the air, he drew a "shooting-iron" from his pocket. The blacksmith
closed with him, struggling to disarm him. The weapon was discharged in
the turmoil, the ball glancing away in the first quiver of sunshine that
had reached the earth to-day, and falling spent across the river.

Grinnell wrested himself from the restraining grasp, and rushed down the
slope to his gate to hide himself from the gaze of the world--his world,
that little group. Then remembering that it was no longer his gate, he
turned from it in an agony of loathing. And knowing that earth held no
shelter for him but the sufferance of another man's roof, he plunged
into the leafless woods as if he heavily dragged himself by a power
which warred within him with other strong motives, and disappeared among
the myriads of holly bushes all aglow with their red berries.

The spectators still followed the surveyor and his Jacob's-staff, but
Purdee lingered. He walked around