e was callin' to me to get up. But I hadn't
forgot a word that Lavina'd said, and I went for that teapot as quick as
I was dressed, and there was the check, sure enough, in good order and
condition!"

He paused to look round at his audience and see the effect of this
statement, and the schoolmaster took advantage of the pause to ask,
"Were you in the habit of putting money in that teapot for safe-keeping,
Uncle Jabez?"

"Young man, I was not," said Uncle Jabez emphatically, and evidently
annoyed both by the question and by the tone in which it was uttered.
"It was a little notion of Lavina's, and I'd never meddled with it, one
way or the other. But I'd left it be there after she died, because I
liked to look at it. I'd no more 'a' dreamed of puttin' that check in it
than I would of puttin' it into Gracie's work-box. But there it was, and
how it come there it wasn't vouchsafed me to know.

"I think it must have been a matter of three or four months after this,
though I wouldn't like to say too positive, that I fell into my first
and last lawsuit. A man I'd always counted a good neighbor made out he'd
found an old title-deed which give him a right to a smart slice off'n my
best meadow-land. It dated fifty years back, and old Peter Pinnell, that
was the only surveyor in the township at that time, made out he
recollected runnin' the lines; and when McKellop, the feller that
claimed the track, took old Pinnell over the ground, to see if he could
find any landmarks that would help to make the claim good, they found a
big pine-tree jest where they wanted to find it, and cut into it at the
right height to find a 'blaze,' if there was one. The rings was marked
as plain as the lines on a map, and when they'd cut through fifty, there
was the mark, sure enough, and McKellop's lawyer crowed ready to hurt
himself. I was a good deal cut down, I can tell you, for I could see
pretty well that it was goin' to turn the scale; and when supper-time
came, Gracie could hardly coax me to the table. I said no, I didn't feel
to be hungry; for I couldn't get that strip of meadow-land out of my
head. And it wasn't so much the value of the land, either, though I
couldn't well afford to lose it, as it was the idee of McKellop's
crowin' and cacklin' all over the neighborhood about it. But Gracie
looked so anxious and tired that I come to the table, jest to satisfy
her; and I found I was hungry, after all, for I'd been trampin' round
the farm most