“She read me a story out of the paper that made us both laugh right hearty, and then a chapter, as usual, and then we went to bed.  And all come round jest as it did afore.  I thought I was roamin’ about the farm, as I had been pretty nigh all day; but things was changed round, somehow, and the further I went the more mixed up they got, till, jest as I’d found the pine-tree, I heard Lavina’s voice, the same as I’d done afore,—­first far, and then near,—­sayin’, ‘Father;’ and the third time she said it, when it sounded close to, she went on to say, ’He’s done his cuttin’, now do you do yours.  You cut through twenty more rings, and you’ll find the blaze that marks your survey.  And then thank him kindly for givin’ you the idee.  The smartest of folks is too smart for themselves once in a while.’  And with that she laughed her own jolly, hearty laugh; but that was the last she said; and I laid there wonderin’ and thinkin’ for a while, and then dropped off to sleep.  But it was all as clear as a bell in my head in the morning, and I had McKellop and old Peter at the pine-tree by eight o’clock.  I’d sharpened my axe good, I can tell you, and it didn’t take me long to cut through twenty more rings, and there, sure enough, was the blaze; and if ever you see a blue-lookin’ man, that man was McKellop; for as soon as old Peter see the blaze he recollected hearin’ his father tell about the survey; he recollected it particular because the old man was a good judge of apple-jack, and he’d said that my father’d gi’n him some of the best, that day the survey was made, that he’d ever tasted.  And Peter said he reckoned he could find something about it in his father’s books and among some loose papers he had in a box.  And, sure enough, he found enough to make my claim as clear as a bell and make McKellop’s as flat as a pancake.  Now, what do you think of that, hey?”

Once more the old man peered into Birchard’s face, and the schoolmaster answered one question with another, after the custom of the country: 

“Did you ever know anything about the blazed tree before McKellop found the blaze?”

“When I come to think it over, I found I did,” said Uncle Jabez, falling all unconscious into the trap set for him.  “I hadn’t no papers about it, but my father had told me all the ins and outs of it when I was a boy, and it had somehow gone out of my mind.”

“Ah!” said the schoolmaster.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘Ah’ in this connection,” said Uncle Jabez, speaking with unwonted sharpness; “but if you’re misdoubtin’ what I tell you I may as well shet up and go home.”