“Rise, my soul, and stretch thy wings,”

till the crows in the wood were frightened by the strange sound, and came flying out and flapping their great wings above his head.

The Frenchman drove into old Ike’s yard.  Ike came out of the house and helped him unload the buckets, and carry them into an old corn-house which stood behind the barn:  As soon as the Frenchman had turned his oxen’s head down the lane, the Elder set out for the house, across the fields.  Old Ike was standing in the barn-door.  When he saw the tall figure striding through the pasture, he ran to let down the bars, and hurried up to the Elder and grasped both his hands.  Not in all Elder Kinney’s parish was there a single heart which beat so warmly for him as did the heart of this poor lonely old man, who had lived by himself in this solitary valley ever since the Elder came to Clairvend.

“Oh, Elder, Elder,” said he, “it does me reel good to see your face.  Be ye well, sir?” looking closely at him.

“Yes, Ike, thank you, I’m always well,” replied the Elder absently.  He was too absorbed in his errand to have precisely his usual manner, and it was the slight change which Ike’s affectionate instinct felt.  But Ike saved him all perplexity as to introducing the object of his visit by saying at once, picking up one of the sugar-buckets which had rolled off to one 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