ther
enough to make about ten rods o' zigzag, two rails high.'

"'Two rails?' says Dave, who had a healthy contempt for the old man's
narrow, contracted way of doing things. 'What's the good of such a fence
as that?'

"'It'll be,' says I, 'like the single bar in music. When our old singing
master asked his class once what a single bar was, Bill Wilkins spoke
up and said, "It's a bar that horses and cattle jump over, and pigs and
sheep run under."'

"'What do you expect to keep out with two rails?'

"'The _law_, boys, the _law_,' says Jedwort. 'I know what I'm about.
I'll make a fence the _law_ can't run under nor jump over; and I don't
care a cuss for the cattle and pigs. You git the rails, and I'll rip
some boards off'n the pig-pen to make stakes.'

"'Boards a'n't good for nothin' for stakes,' says Dave. 'Besides, none
can't be spared from the pig-pen.'

"'I'll have boards enough in a day or two for forty pig-pens,' says
Jedwort. 'Bring along the rails and dump 'em out in the road for the
present, and say nothin' to nobody.'

"We got the rails, and he made his stakes; and right away after dinner
he called us out. 'Come, boys,' says he, 'now we'll astonish the
natives.'

"The wagon stood in the road, with the last jag of rails still on it.
Jedwort piled on his stakes, and threw on the crowbar and axe, while we
were hitching up the team.

"'Now, drive on, Stark,' says he.

"'Yes; but where shall I drive to?'

"'To the old meetin'-house,' says Jedwort, trudging on ahead.

"The old meeting-house stood on an open common, at the northeast corner
of his farm. A couple of cross-roads bounded it on two sides; and it
was bounded on the other two by Jedwort's overgrown stone wall. It was
a square, old-fashioned building, with a low steeple, that had a
belfry, but no bell in it, and with a high, square pulpit and high,
straight-backed pews inside. It was now some time since meetings
had been held there; the old society that used to meet there having
separated, one division of it building a fashionable chapel in the North
Village, and the other a fine new church at the Centre.

"Now, the peculiarity about the old church property was, that nobody had
any legal title to it. A log meeting-house had been built there when the
country was first settled and the land was of no account. In the course
of time that was torn down, and a good frame house put up in its place.
As it belonged to the whole community, no title, eith