It was necessary to act cautiously; he felt instinctively sure that the Frenchman had not purchased the land.  His occupation of it had evidently been acquiesced in by the town for many years; but the Elder was too well aware of the slack and unbusinesslike way in which much of the town business was managed, to attach much weight to this fact.  He was perplexed—­a rare thing for Elder Kinney.  He stopped and sat down on the top of a stone wall to think.  In a few minutes he saw the steaming heads of a pair of oxen coming up the hill.  Slowly the cart came in sight:  it was loaded with sugar-buckets; and there, walking by its side, was—­yes! it was—­the very Frenchman himself.

Elder Kinney was too much astonished even to say “Whew!”

“This begins to look like the Lord’s own business,” was the first impulsive thought of his devout heart.  “There’s plainly something to be done.  That little Draxy’s father shall get some o’ the next year’s sugar out o’ that camp, or my name isn’t Seth Kinney;” and the Elder sprang from the wall and walked briskly towards the Frenchman.  As he drew near him, and saw the forbidding look on the fellow’s face, he suddenly abandoned his first intention, which was to speak to him, and, merely bowing, passed on down the hill.

“He’s a villain, if I know the look of one,” said honest Elder.  “I’ll think a little longer.  I wonder where he stores his buckets.  Now, there’s a chance,” and Elder Kinney turned about and followed the plodding cart up the hill again.  It was a long pull and a tedious one; and for Elder Kinney to keep behind oxen was a torture like being in a straight waistcoat.  One mile, two miles, three miles! the Elder half repented of his undertaking; but like all wise and magnetic natures, he had great faith in his first impulses, and he kept on.

At last the cart turned into a lane on the right-hand side of the road.

“Why, he’s goin’ to old Ike’s,” exclaimed the Elder.  “Well, I can get at all old Ike knows, and it’s pretty apt to be all there is worth knowin’,” and Elder Kinney began, in his satisfaction, to whistle

  “Life is the time to serve the Lord,”

in notes as clear and loud as a bob-o’-link’s.

He walked on rapidly, and was very near overtaking the Frenchman, when a new thought struck him.  “Now, if he’s uneasy about himself,—­and if he knows he ain’t honest, of course he’s uneasy,—­he’ll may be think I’m on his track, and be off to his ‘hum,’ as Nancy calls it,” and the Elder chuckled at the memory, “an’ I shouldn’t have any chance of ketchin’ him here for another year.”  The Elder stood still again.  Presently he jumped a fence, and walking off to the left, climbed a hill, from the top of which he could see old Ike’s house.  Here, in the edge of a spruce grove, he walked back and forth, watching the proceedings below.  “Seems little too much like bein’ a spy,” thought the good man, “but I never felt a clearer call in a thing in my life than I do in this little girl’s letter,” and he fell to singing