The sentence, “I am Reuben Miller’s daughter,” went to his heart as it had gone to every man’s heart who had heard it before from Draxy’s unconscious lips.  But it sunk deeper in his heart than in any other.

“If baby had lived she would have loved me like this perhaps,” thought the Elder, as he read the pathetic words over and over.  Then he studied the paragraph copied from the deed.  Suddenly a thought flashed into his mind.  He knew something about this land.  It must be—­yes, it must be on a part of this land that the sugar-camp lay from which he had been sent for, five years before, to see a Frenchman who was lying very ill in the little log sugar-house.  The Elder racked his brains.  Slowly it all came back to him.  He remembered that at the time some ill-will had been shown in the town toward this Frenchman; that doubts had been expressed about his right to the land; and that no one would go out into the clearing to help take care of him.  Occasionally, since that time, the Elder had seen the man hanging about the town.  He had an evil look; this was all the Elder could remember.

At breakfast he said to old Nancy, his housekeeper:  “Nancy, did you ever know anything about that Frenchman who had a sugar-camp out back of the swamp road?  I went to see him when he had the fever a few years ago.”

Nancy was an Indian woman with a little white blood in her veins.  She never forgot an injury.  This Frenchman had once jeered at her from the steps of the village store, and the village men had laughed.

“Know anythin’ about him?  Yes, sir.  He’s a son o’ Satan, an’ I reckon he stays to hum the great part o’ the year, for he’s never seen round here except jest sugarin’ time.”

The Elder laughed in spite of himself.  Nancy’s tongue was a member of which he strongly disapproved; but his efforts to enforce charity and propriety of speech upon her were sometimes rendered null and void by his lack of control of his features.  Nancy loved her master, but she had no reverence in her composition, and nothing gave her such delight as to make him laugh out against his will.  She went on to say that the Frenchman came every spring, bringing with him a gang of men, some twelve or more, “all sons o’ the same father, sir; you’d know ’em’s far’s you see ’em.”  They took a large stock of provisions, went out into the maple clearing, and lived there during the whole sugar season in rough log huts.  “They do say he’s jest carried off a good thousand dollar’s worth o’ sugar this very week,” said Nancy.

The Elder brought his hand down hard on the table and said “Whew!” This was Elder Kinney’s one ejaculation.  Nancy seldom heard it, and she knew it meant tremendous excitement.  She grew eager, and lingered, hoping for further questions; but the Elder wanted his next information from a more accurate and trustworthy source than old Nancy.  Immediately after breakfast he set out for the village; soon he slackened his pace, and began to reflect.