get some o' the next year's sugar
out o' that camp, or my name isn't Seth Kinney;" and the Elder sprang from
the wall and walked briskly towards the Frenchman. As he drew near him,
and saw the forbidding look on the fellow's face, he suddenly abandoned
his first intention, which was to speak to him, and, merely bowing, passed
on down the hill.

"He's a villain, if I know the look of one," said honest Elder. "I'll
think a little longer. I wonder where he stores his buckets. Now, there's
a chance," and Elder Kinney turned about and followed the plodding cart up
the hill again. It was a long pull and a tedious one; and for Elder Kinney
to keep behind oxen was a torture like being in a straight waistcoat. One
mile, two miles, three miles! the Elder half repented of his undertaking;
but like all wise and magnetic natures, he had great faith in his first
impulses, and he kept on.

At last the cart turned into a lane on the right-hand side of the road.

"Why, he's goin' to old Ike's," exclaimed the Elder. "Well, I can get at
all old Ike knows, and it's pretty apt to be all there is worth knowin',"
and Elder Kinney began, in his satisfaction, to whistle

"Life is the time to serve the Lord,"

in notes as clear and loud as a bob-o'-link's.

He walked on rapidly, and was very near overtaking the Frenchman, when a
new thought struck him. "Now, if he's uneasy about himself,--and if he
knows he ain't honest, of course he's uneasy,--he'll may be think I'm on
his track, and be off to his 'hum,' as Nancy calls it," and the Elder
chuckled at the memory, "an' I shouldn't have any chance of ketchin' him
here for another year." The Elder stood still again. Presently he jumped a
fence, and walking off to the left, climbed a hill, from the top of which
he could see old Ike's house. Here, in the edge of a spruce grove, he
walked back and forth, watching the proceedings below. "Seems little too
much like bein' a spy," thought the good man, "but I never felt a clearer
call in a thing in my life than I do in this little girl's letter," and he
fell to singing

"Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,"

till the crows in the wood were frightened by the strange sound, and came
flying out and flapping their great wings above his head.

The Frenchman drove into old Ike's yard. Ike came out of the house and
helped him unload the buckets, and carry them into an old corn-house which
stood behind the barn: As soon as the Frenchman had turned