ned
to the charge.

'Suppose the boy with the bad grandfather had a good grandmother,
Ichabod?'

'None of the Mountain lot ever had,' Ichabod replied. There was no item
in Ichabod's creed more fixed than this--the Mountains of Mountain
Farm were hateful and contemptible. He had imbibed the belief with his
mother's milk and his father's counsel. His grandfather had known it for
the one cardinal certainty of nature.

Just as the serving-men of Capulet hated the serving-men of Montague,
so the oldest servants of the Mountains hated the older servants of the
Reddys. The men made the masters' quarrel their own. There was a feudal
spirit in the matter, and half the fights of this outlying district of
the parish were provoked by that ancient history of the brook. At this
time of day it mattered very little indeed if the history was true
or false, for neither proof nor disproof was possible, and the real
mischief was done past remedy in any case.

'Are you sure our side fought for Cromwell, Ichabod?' Master Richard.
asked, after another long and thoughtful silence.

'To be sure,' said Ichabod.

'I don't think it can be true, then, about the brook,' said the boy,
'because Cromwell won, and everybody who was on his side had their own
way. Mr. Greenfell teaches history at school, and he says so.'

This was nothing to Ichabod, whose intellect was not constructed for the
reception of historical evidences.

'Then ax thy feyther, Master Richard,' he answered; 'he'll tell thee the
rights on it.'

The boy walked on pondering, as children of his age will do. The seniors
would be surprised pretty often if they could guess how deep and far the
young thoughts go, but, then, the seniors have forgotten their own young
days, or were never of a thinking habit. Ichabod clamped along with
his mind on beer. The boy thought his own thoughts, and each was
indifferent for a while to outer signs and sounds. But suddenly a
little girl ran round a corner of the devious lane with a brace of
young savages in pursuit. The youthful savages had each an armful of
snowballs, and they were pelting the child with more animus than seemed
befitting. The very tightness with which the balls were pressed seemed
to say that they were bent less on sport than mischief, and they came
whooping and dancing round the corner with such rejoicing cruelty as
only boys or uncivilised men can feel. The little girl was sobbing,
half in distress, and half because of the