raise only a smitch of 'em last year and the year before--just them that
the hens hatched themselves in stolen nests, and chanced to bring up
alive.

"You better grease the cart before you use it. It's stood since they
hauled in corn last fall.

"And look out for Dickerson. Ask him for the things he borrowed. You'll
need 'em, p'r'aps, if you're goin' to do any farmin' for Mis' Atterson."

She bustled away. Hiram thought he had heard enough about his neighbors
for a while, and he went out to look over the pasture fencing, which was
to be his first repair job. He would have that ready to turn the cow and
her calf into as soon as the grass began to grow.

He rummaged about in what had been half woodshed and half workshop
in Uncle Jeptha's time, and found a heavy claw-hammer, a pair of wire
cutters, and a pocket full of fence staples.

With this outfit he prepared to follow the line fence, which was
likewise the pasture fence on the west side, between Mrs. Atterson's and
Dickerson's.

Where he could, he mended the broken strands of wire. In other places
the wires had sagged and were loose. The claw-hammer fixed these like
a charm. Slipping the wire into the claw, a single twist of the wrist
would usually pick up the sag and make the wire taut again at that
point.

He drove a few staples, as needed, as he walked along. The pasture
partook of the general conformation of the farm--it was rather long and
narrow.

It had grown to clumps of bushes in spots, and there was sufficient
shade. But he did not come to the water until he reached the lower end
of the lot.

The branch trickled from a spring, or springs, farther east. It made
an elbow at the corner of the pasture--the lower south-west corner--and
there a water-hole had been scooped out at some past time.

This waterhole was deep enough for all purposes, and was shaded by a
great oak that had stood there long before the house belonging to Jeptha
Atterson had been built.

Here Hiram struck something that puzzled him. The boundary fence crossed
this water-hole at a tangent, and recrossed to the west bank of the
outflowing branch a few yards below, leaving perhaps half of the
water-hole upon the neighbor's side of the fence.

Some of this wire at the water-hole was practically new. So were the
posts. And after a little Hiram traced the line of old postholes which
had followed a straight line on the west side of the water-hole.

In other words, this water-priv