"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 thecow 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-privilege for Dickerson's land was of recent arrangement--so recent indeed, that the young farmer believed he could see some fresh-turned earth about the newly-set posts.
That's something to be looked into, I am afraid," thought Hiram, as he moved along the southern pasture fence.
But the trickle of the branch beckoned him; he had not found the fountain-head of the little stream when he had walked over a part of the timbered land with Henry Pollock, and now he struck into the open woods again, digging into the soil here and there with his heavy boot, marking the quality and age of the timber, and casting-up in his mind the possibilities and expense of clearing these overgrown acres.
"Mrs. Atterson may have a very valuable piece of land here in time," muttered Hiram. "A sawmill set up in here could cut many a hundred thousand feet of lumber--and good lumber, too. But it would spoil the beauty of the farm."However, as must ever be in the case of the utility farm, the house was set on its ugliest part. The cleared fields along the road had nothing but the background of woods on the south and east to relieve their monotony.
On the brow of the steeper descent, which he had noted on his former visit to the back end of the farm, he found a certain clearing in the wood. Here the pines surrounded the opening on three sides.
