“Young man, I was not,” said Uncle Jabez emphatically, and evidently annoyed both by the question and by the tone in which it was uttered.  “It was a little notion of Lavina’s, and I’d never meddled with it, one way or the other.  But I’d left it be there after she died, because I liked to look at it.  I’d no more ‘a’ dreamed of puttin’ that check in it than I would of puttin’ it into Gracie’s work-box.  But there it was, and how it come there it wasn’t vouchsafed me to know.

“I think it must have been a matter of three or four months after this, though I wouldn’t like to say too positive, that I fell into my first and last lawsuit.  A man I’d always counted a good neighbor made out he’d found an old title-deed which give him a right to a smart slice off’n my best meadow-land.  It dated fifty years back, and old Peter Pinnell, that was the only surveyor in the township at that time, made out he recollected runnin’ the lines; and when McKellop, the feller that claimed the track, took old Pinnell over the ground, to see if he could find any landmarks that would help to make the claim good, they found a big pine-tree jest where they wanted to find it, and cut into it at the right height to find a ‘blaze,’ if there was one.  The rings was marked as plain as the lines on a map, and when they’d cut through fifty, there was the mark, sure enough, and McKellop’s lawyer crowed ready to hurt himself.  I was a good deal cut down, I can tell you, for I could see pretty well that it was goin’ to turn the scale; and when supper-time came, Gracie could hardly coax me to the table.  I said no, I didn’t feel to be hungry; for I couldn’t get that strip of meadow-land out of my head.  And it wasn’t so much the value of the land, either, though I couldn’t well afford to lose it, as it was the idee of McKellop’s crowin’ and cacklin’ all over the neighborhood about it.  But Gracie looked so anxious and tired that I come to the table, jest to satisfy her; and I found I was hungry, after all, for I’d been trampin’ round the farm most of the day, lookin’ for some landmark or sign that would prove my claim, that dated seventy years back.  I recollect we had soused pigs’ feet for supper that night; and I don’t think I ever tasted better in my life.  I eat pretty free of them, as I always did of anything I liked, and we wound up with some of her canned peaches, that she’d got out to coax me to eat, and cream on ’em ’most as thick as butter:  she had a skimmer with holes into it that she always skimmed the cream with for our own use.  She’d made as good a pot of coffee as I ever tasted.  And when I’d had all I wanted, I felt a good deal better, and I says to her,—­’I’ll fret over it no more, Gracie:  if it’s his’n, let him take it ‘ithout more words.’