side, "I'm jest pilin' up Ganew's sugar-buckets for him. He pays me well
for storin' 'em, but I kind o' hate to have anythin' to do with him. Don't
you remember him, sir--him that was so awful bad with the fever down'n the
clearin' five years ago this month? You was down to see him, I know."

"Yes, yes, I remember," said the Elder, with a manner so nonchalant that
he was frightened at his own diplomacy. "He was a bad fellow, I thought,"

Ike went on: "Wall, that's everybody's feelin' about him: and there ain't
no great thing to show for 't nuther. But they did say a while back that
he hadn't no reel right to the land. He turned up all of a sudden, and
paid up all there was owin' on the taxes, an' he's paid 'em regular ever
sence. But he hain't never showed how the notes come to be signed by some
other name. Yes, sir, the hull lot--it's nigh on ter three hundred acres,
such's 'tis; a good part on't 's swamp though, that ain't wuth a
copper--the hull lot went to a man down in York State, when the Iron
Company bust up here, and for two or three year the chap he jest sent up
his note for the taxes, and they've a drefful shiftless way o' lettin'
things go in this ere town, 's you know, sir; there wan't nobody that
knowed what a sugar orchard was a lyin' in there, or there'd been plenty
to grab for it; but I don't s'pose there's three men in the town'd ever
been over back o' Birch Hill till this Ganew he come and cut a road in,
and had his sugar-camp agoin' one spring, afore anybody knew what he was
arter. But he's paid all up reg'lar, and well he may, sez everybody, for
he can't get his sugar off, sly's he is, w'thout folks gettin' some kind
o' notion about it, an' they say's he's cleared thousands an' thousands o'
dollars. I expect they ain't overshot the mark nuther, for he's got six
hundred new buckets this spring, and Bill Sims, he's been in with 'em the
last two years, 'n he says there ain't no sugar orchard to compare, except
Squire White's over in Mill Creek, and he's often taken in three thousand