ick of wood and made gestures with it as he told how
he had come from Vermont with a team and a pair of oxen and some bedding
and furniture and seven hundred dollars in money. He flung the stick of
wood into the box with a loud thump as he told how he had bought his
farm of Benjamin Grimshaw at a price which doubled its value. True it
was the price which other men had paid in the neighborhood, but they had
all paid too much. Grimshaw had established the price and called it
fair. He had taken Mr. Barnes to two or three of the settlers on the
hills above Lickitysplit.

"Tell this man what you think about the kind o' land we got here,"
Grimshaw had demanded.

The tenant recommended it. He had to. They were all afraid of Grimshaw.
Mr. Barnes picked up a flat iron and felt its bottom and waved it in the
air as he alleged that it was a rocky, stumpy, rooty, God-forsaken
region far from church or market or school on a rough road almost
impassable for a third of the year. Desperate economy and hard work had
kept his nose to the grindstone but, thank God, he had nose enough left.

Now and then Grimshaw (and others like him) loaned money to people, but
he always had some worthless hay or a broken-down horse which you had to
buy before you could get the money.

Mr. Barnes put down the flat iron and picked up the poker and tried its
strength on his knee as he told how he had heard that it was a growing
country near the great water highway of the St. Lawrence. Prosperous
towns were building up in it. There were going to be great cities in
Northern New York. What they called a railroad was coming. There were
rich stores of lead and iron in the rocks. Mr. Barnes had bought two
hundred acres at ten dollars an acre. He had to pay a fee of five per
cent. to Grimshaw's lawyer for the survey and the papers. This left him
owing fourteen hundred dollars on his farm--much more than it was worth.
One hundred acres of the land had been roughly cleared by Grimshaw and a
former tenant. The latter had toiled and struggled and paid tribute and
given up.

Our cousin twisted the poker in his great hands until it squeaked as he
stood before my uncle and said:

"My wife and I have chopped and burnt and pried and hauled rocks an'
shoveled dung an' milked an' churned until we are worn out. For almost
twenty years we've been workin' days an' nights an' Sundays. My mortgage
was over-due, I owed six hundred dollars on it. I thought it all over
one da