ld from all time,
lying very level at the foot of the slope that crowds up against
Kearsarge, falling slightly toward the town. North and south it is
fenced by low old glacial ridges, boulder strewn and untenable. Eastward
it butts on orchard closes and the village gardens, brimming over into
them by wild brier and creeping grass. The village street, with its
double row of unlike houses, breaks off abruptly at the edge of the
field in a footpath that goes up the streamside, beyond it, to the
source of waters.

The field is not greatly esteemed of the town, not being put to the
plough nor affording firewood, but breeding all manner of wild seeds
that go down in the irrigating ditches to come up as weeds in the
gardens and grass plots. But when I had no more than seen it in the
charm of its spring smiling, I knew I should have no peace until I had
bought ground and built me a house beside it, with a little wicket to go
in and out at all hours, as afterward came about.

Edswick, Roeder, Connor, and Ruffin owned the field before it fell to my
neighbor. But before that the Paiutes, mesne lords of the soil, made a
campoodie by the rill of Pine Creek; and after, contesting the soil with
them, cattle-men, who found its foodful pastures greatly to their
advantage; and bands of blethering flocks shepherded by wild, hairy men
of little speech, who attested their rights to the feeding ground with
their long staves upon each other's skulls. Edswick homesteaded the
field about the time the wild tide of mining life was roaring and
rioting up Kearsarge, and where the village now stands built a stone
hut, with loopholes to make good his claim against cattle-men or
Indians. But Edswick died and Roeder became master of the field. Roeder
owned cattle on a thousand hills, and made it a recruiting ground for
his bellowing herds before beginning the long drive to market across a
shifty desert. He kept the field fifteen years, and afterward falling
into difficulties, put it out as security against certain sums. Connor,
who held the securities, was cleverer than Roeder and not so busy. The
money fell due the winter of the Big Snow, when all the trails were
forty feet under drifts, and Roeder was away in San Francisco selling
his cattle. At the set time Connor took the law by the forelock and was
adjudged possession of the field. Eighteen days later Roeder arrived on
snowshoes, both feet frozen, and the money in his pack. In the long suit
at l