ouldn't turn a spider web."

Nehemiah, quaking under the glance of his keen questioning eye, would
once more lapse into silence, while the surveyor, loving to do what
he could do well, was lured on in his favorite subject by the renewed
appearance of receptivity in his listener.

"Waal, ez I war a-sayin', I know every furlong o' the creeks once down
in the Cove, an' all their meanderings, an' the best part o' them in the
hills amongst the laurel and the wildernesses. But now the ways of sech
a stream ez Hide-an'-Seek Creek are past finding out. It's a 'sinking
creek,' you know; goes along with a good volume and a swift current for
a while to the west, then disappears into the earth, an' ain't seen fur
five mile, then comes out agin running due north, makes a tre-menjious
jump--the Hoho-hebee Falls--then pops into the ground agin, an' ain't
seen no more forever," he concluded, dramatically.

"How d'ye know it's the same creek?" demanded Nehemiah, sceptically, and
with a wrinkling brow.

"By settin' somethin' afloat on it before it sinks into the ground--a
piece of marked bark or a shingle or the like--an' finding it agin after
the stream comes out of the caves," promptly replied the man of the
compass, with a triumphant snap of the eye, as if he entertained a
certain pride in the vagaries of his untamed mountain friend. "Nobody
knows how often it disappears, nor where it rises, nor where it goes at
last. It's got dozens of fust-rate millin' sites, but then it's too fur
off fur you ter think about."

"Oh no 'tain't!" exclaimed Nehemiah, suddenly.

The surveyor stared. "Why, you ain't thinkin' 'bout movin' up inter the
wilderness ter live, an' ye jes applied fur the post-office down at the
crossroads? Ye can't run the post-office thar an' a sawmill thirty mile
away at the same time."

Nehemiah was visibly disconcerted. His wrinkled face showed the flush of
discomfiture, but his craft rallied to the emergency.

"Moughtn't git the post-office, arter all's come an' gone. Nothin' is
sartin in this vale o' tears."

"An' ye air goin' ter take ter the woods ef ye don't?" demanded the
surveyor, incredulously. "Thought ye war goin' ter keep store?"

"Waal, I dun'no'; jes talkin' round," said Nehemiah, posed beyond
recuperation. "I mus' be a-joggin', ennyhow. Time's a-wastin'."

As he made off hastily in the direction of his house, for this
conversation had taken place at the blacksmith's shop at the
cross-roads, the su