He was the first settler in that
township, and chose his location in a remote spot, for the sake of a
beautiful natural spring, which bubbled up in a small stone basin in
the green bank at the back of the house.
"Father might have had the pick of the township," quoth Uncle Joe;
"but the old coon preferred that sup of good water to the site of a
town. Well, I guess it's seldom I trouble the spring; and whenever I
step that way to water the horses, I think what a tarnation fool the
old one was, to throw away such a chance of making his fortune, for
such cold lap."
"Your father was a temperance man?"
"Temperance! - He had been fond enough of the whiskey bottle in his
day. He drank up a good farm in the United States, and then he
thought he could not do better than turn loyal, and get one here for
nothing. He did not care a cent, not he, for the King of England.
He thought himself as good, any how. But he found that he would have
to work hard here to scratch along, and he was mightily plagued with
the rheumatics, and some old woman told him that good spring water
was the best cure for that; so he chose this poor, light, stony land
on account of the spring, and took to hard work and drinking cold
water in his old age."
"How did the change agree with him?"
"I guess better than could have been expected. He planted that fine
orchard, and cleared his hundred acres, and we got along slick
enough as long as the old fellow lived."
"And what happened after his death, that obliged you to part with
your land?"
"Bad times - bad crops," said Uncle Joe, lifting his shoulders.
"I had not my father's way of scraping money together. I made some
deuced clever speculations, but they all failed. I married young,
and got a large family; and the women critters ran up heavy bills at
the stores, and the crops did not yield enough to pay them; and from
bad we got to worse, and Mr. C - - put in an execution, and seized
upon the whole concern. He sold it to your man for double what it
cost him; and you got all that my father toiled for during the last
twenty years of his life for less than half the cash he laid out
upon clearing it."
"And had the whiskey nothing to do with this change?" said I,
looking him in the face suspiciously.
