h ado to defend himself against the sneers
and rebukes with which the party beguiled the way through the wintry
woods. "Ter go a-claimin' another man's land, an' put him ter the
expense o' processionin' it, an' git his line run!" exclaimed the
blacksmith, indignantly. "An' ye 'ain't got nare sign o' a show at
Moses' tables!"

"I dunno how this hyar line air a-runnin'," declared Grinnell, sorely
beset. "I don't b'lieve it air a-runnin' north."

The surveyor was hard by. He had planted his staff again, and was once
more taking his bearings. He looked up for a second.

"Northwest," he said.

Grinnell stared for a moment; then strode up to the surveyor, and
pointed with his stubby finger at a word on his deed.

The official looked with interest at it; he held up suddenly Purdee's
grant and read aloud, "From Crystal Spring seven hundred poles
_northwest_ to a stake in the middle of the river."

He examined, too, the original plat of survey which he had taken to
guide him, and also the plat made when Squire Bates sold to Grinnell's
father; "_northwest_" they all agreed. There was evidently a clerical
error on the part of the scrivener who had written Grinnell's deed.

In a moment the harassed man saw that through the processioning
of Purdee's land he had lost heavily in the extent of his supposed
possessions. He it was who had claimed what was rightfully another's.
And because of the charge Purdee was the richer by a huge slice of
mountain land--how large he could not say, as he ruefully followed the
line of survey.

But for this discovery the interest of processioning Purdee's land would
have subsided with the determination of the ownership of the limited
environment of the stone tables of the Law. Now, as they followed
the ever-diverging line to the northwest, the group was pervaded by a
subdued and tremulous excitement, in which even the surveyor shared.
Two or three whispered apart now and then, and Grinnell, struggling to
suppress his dismay, was keenly conscious of the glances that sought him
again and again in the effort to judge how he was taking it. Only Purdee
himself was withdrawn from the interest that swayed them all. He had
loitered at first, dallying with a temptation to slip silently from the
party and retrace his way to the tables and ascertain, perchance, if
some vestige of that mystic scripture might not reveal itself to him
anew, or if it had been only some morbid fancy, some futile influence
of