k or
two, and hands him a paper.

"What's this?" says Tom, staring at it blankly.

"Ye won't blame me, Mac," answers Mr. Jarrott, somewhat ashamed of his
role of process-server. "'Tain't none of my doin's."

"Read it, Davy," said Tom, giving it to me.

I stopped the mill, and, unfolding the paper, read. I remember not
the quaint wording of it, save that it was ill-spelled and ill-writ
generally. In short, it was a summons for Tom to appear before the court
at Danville on a certain day in the following week, and I made out that
a Mr. Neville Colfax was the plaintiff in the matter, and that the suit
had to do with land.

"Neville Colfax!" I exclaimed, "that's the man for whom Mr. Potts was
agent."

"Ay, ay," said Tom, and sat him down on the meal-bags. "Drat the
varmint, he kin hev the land."

"Hev the land?" cried Polly Ann, who had come in upon us. "Hev ye no
sperrit, Tom McChesney?"

"There's no chance ag'in the law," said Tom, hopelessly. "Thar's Perkins
had his land tuck away last year, and Terrell's moved out, and twenty
more I could name. And thar's Dan'l Boone, himself. Most the rich bottom
he tuck up the critters hev got away from him."

"Ye'll go to Danville and take Davy with ye and fight it," answered
Polly Ann, decidedly. "Davy has a word to say, I reckon. 'Twas he made
the mill and scar't that Mr. Potts away. I reckon he'll git us out of
this fix."

Mr. Jarrott applauded her courage.

"Ye have the grit, ma'am," he said, as he mounted his horse again.
"Here's luck to ye!"

The remembrance of Mr. Potts weighed heavily upon my mind during the
next week. Perchance Tom would have to pay for this prank likewise.
'Twas indeed a foolish, childish thing to have done, and I might have
known that it would only have put off the evil day of reckoning. Since
then, by reason of the mill site and the business we got by it, the land
had become the most valuable in that part of the country. Had I known
Colonel Clark's whereabouts, I should have gone to him for advice and
comfort. As it was, we were forced to await the issue without counsel.
Polly Ann and I talked it over many times while Tom sat, morose and
silent, in a corner. He was the pioneer pure and simple, afraid of no
man, red or white, in open combat, but defenceless in such matters as
this.

"'Tis Davy will save us, Tom," said Polly Ann, "with the l'arnin' he's
got while the corn was grindin'."

I had, indeed, been reading at the mill while the h