Ann, seated on the door-log, sewing. As I drew near, she looked up at me
from her work. She was a woman upon whose eternal freshness industry
made no mar.

"Davy," she exclaimed, "how ye've growed! I thought ye'd be a wizened
little body, but this year ye've shot up like a cornstalk."

"My father was six feet two inches in his moccasins," I said.

"He'll be wallopin' me soon," said Tom, with a grin. He took a long
whiff at his pipe, and added thoughtfully, "I reckon this ain't no place
fer me now, with all the settler folks and land-grabbers comin' through
the Gap."

"Tom," said I, "there's a bit of a fall on the river here."

"Ay," he said, "and nary a fish left."

"Something better," I answered; "we'll put a dam there and a mill and a
hominy pounder."

"And make our fortune grinding corn for the settlers," cried Polly Ann,
showing a line of very white teeth. "I always said ye'd be a rich man,
Davy."

Tom was mildly interested, and went with us at daylight to measure the
fall. And he allowed that he would have the more time to hunt if the
mill were a success. For a month I had had the scheme in my mind, where
the dam was to be put, the race, and the wondrous wheel rimmed with cow
horns to dip the water. And fixed on the wheel there was to be a crank