hings, a good share of the rest of the
clover? Why, it didn't hurt _him_ any. The old miser! It wasn't _his_
field of clover that Katy trampled down. And besides, didn't he pay
his minister's tax? and didn't the minister and his family live in
better style than he and his family could afford to live in?

Katy loved clover. _He_ wasn't to blame for that, and he didn't know
that Katy was to blame. It was a very natural taste, that of his old
mare. And why didn't the parson, he should like to know, build his
fence higher, if he didn't want his clover eaten up by other people's
horses?

What was it to Billy Birch, if his dog did kill a neighbor's sheep,
now and then? What did he care, what should he care? If they were his
own sheep, that would alter the case. But Caesar never killed his
master's sheep. Wasn't that kind in Caesar? And as to this sheep-biting
habit of his, why it is the _nature_ of dogs to kill sheep. Caesar
_must_ kill somebody's sheep; and if he hadn't picked out a good fat
one from this flock, it would have been somebody else's flock. What is
the use in making such a fuss about a sheep or two? The loss of one
sheep won't break any body. What can't be cured, must be endured.
People must take care of their sheep, if they don't want them to be
killed.

That is the way this selfish, narrow-minded farmer reasoned and
talked. You can see, plainly enough, that he was not the sort of man
to be very much respected in the neighborhood. He was not respected.
In fact, there was not, in all the parish, a more generally unpopular
man than Billy Birch.

The boys, I have heard, bore him a grudge of long standing. It related
to the huckleberries and hazel nuts in the old man's birch woods.
There were bushels of huckleberries, and almost as many hazel nuts, in
those woods. But would you have thought of such a thing? Mr. Birch
forbade the boys picking any of his huckleberries or hazel nuts. Ever
so many huckleberries decayed on the bushes every year, or were left
to be harvested by the birds, because Mr. Birch's family could not
pick them all themselves, and he was so tight that he would not let
any body else pick them. He was like the dog in the manger, you see.
He could not eat the hay himself, and he would not let any body else
eat it.

But the meanest thing that I ever heard of his doing, was this: In
these same woods--the woods where the huckleberries and hazel nuts
grew--there were great multitudes of birch tree