thought a very queer thing to dig for
water. Of course they must have known that people used to do this in
the olden times, even as far back as the time of Jacob and Rebecca, but
the expressions of some of their faces indicated that they remembered
that this was the nineteenth century.

My neighbors, however, were all rural people, and much more intelligent
in regard to water-supplies. One of them, Phineas Colwell by name,
took a more lively interest in my operations than did any one else. He
was a man of about fifty years of age, who had been a soldier. This
fact was kept alive in the minds of his associates by his dress, a part
of which was always military. If he did not wear an old fatigue-jacket
with brass buttons, he wore his blue trousers, or, perhaps, a waistcoat
that belonged to his uniform, and if he wore none of these, his
military hat would appear upon his head. I think he must also have
been a sailor, judging from the little gold rings in his ears. But
when I first knew him he was a carpenter, who did mason-work whenever
any of the neighbors had any jobs of the sort. He also worked in
gardens by the day, and had told me that he understood the care of
horses and was a very good driver. He sometimes worked on farms,
especially at harvest-time, and I know he could paint, for he once
showed me a fence which he said he had painted. I frequently saw him,
because he always seemed to be either going to his work or coming from
it. In fact, he appeared to consider actual labor in the light of a
bad habit which he wished to conceal, and which he was continually
endeavoring to reform.

Phineas walked along our lane at least once a day, and whenever he saw
me he told me something about the well. He did not approve of the
place I had selected for it. If he had been digging a well he would
have put it in a very different place. When I had talked with him for
some time and explained why I had chosen this spot, he would say that
perhaps I was right, and begin to talk of something else. But the next
time I saw him he would again assert that if he had been digging that
well he would not have put it there.

About a quarter of a mile from my house, at a turn of the lane, lived
Mrs. Betty Perch. She was a widow with about twelve children. A few
of these were her own, and the others she had inherited from two
sisters who had married and died, and whose husbands, having proved
their disloyalty by marrying again