ith the
heart of a farmer within him was at the plough-handles, and making the
most of the fair weather. The cloudless sky and the auspicious forecast
of fine days still to come did more to prove to the farmer the existence
of an all-wise, overruling Providence than all the polemics of the world
might accomplish. The furrows multiplied everywhere save in Nehemiah's
own fields, where he often stood so long in the turn-row that the old
horse would desist from twisting his head backward in surprise, and
start at last of his own motion, dragging the plough, the share still
unanchored in the ground, half across the field before he could be
stopped. The vagaries of these "lands" that the absent-minded Nehemiah
laid off attracted some attention.

"What ails yer furrows ter run so crooked, Nehemiah?" observed a
passer-by, a neighbor who had been to the blacksmith-shop to get his
plough-point sharpened; he looked over the fence critically. "Yer
eyesight mus' be failin' some."

"I dun'no'," rejoined Nehemiah, hastily. Then reverting to his own
absorption. "War it you-uns ez I hearn say thar war word kem ter the
crossroads 'bout some revenuers raid in' 'round some-whar in the woods?"

The look of surprise cast upon him seemed to his alert anxiety to
betoken suspicion. "Laws-a-massy, naw!" exclaimed his interlocutor. "Ye
air the fust one that hev named sech ez that in these diggin's, fur I'd
hev hearn tell on it, sure, ef thar hed been enny sech word goin' the
rounds."

Nehemiah recoiled into silence, and presently his neighbor went
whistling on his way. He stood motionless for a time, until the man was
well out of sight, then he began to hastily unhitch the plough-gear.
His resolution was taken. He could wait no longer. For aught he knew the
raiders might have come and gone, and be now a hundred miles away with
their prisoners to stand their trial in the Federal court, his schemes
might have all gone amiss, leaving him in naught the gainer. He could
rest in uncertainty no more. He feared to venture further questions
when no rumor stirred the air. They rendered him doubly liable
to suspicion--to the law-abiding as a possible moonshiner, to any
sympathizer with the distillers as a probable informer. He determined to
visit the spot, and there judge how the enterprise had fared.

When next he heard that fine sylvan symphony of the sound of the falling
water--the tinkling bell-like tremors of its lighter tones mingling with
the s