“The wagon stood in the road, with the last jag of rails still on it. Jedwort piled on his stakes, and threw on the crowbar and axe, while we were hitching up the team.

“‘Now, drive on, Stark,’ says he.

“‘Yes; but where shall I drive to?’

“‘To the old meetin’-house,’ says Jedwort, trudging on ahead.

“The old meeting-house stood on an open common, at the north-east corner of his farm. A couple of cross-roads bounded it on two sides; and it was bounded on the other two by Jedwort’s overgrown stone wall. It was a square, old-fashioned building, with a low steeple, that had a belfry, but no bell in it, and with a high square pulpit and high straight-backed pews inside. It was now some time since meetings had been held there; the old society that used to meet there having separated, one division of it building a fashionable chapel in the North Village, and the other a fine new church at the Centre.

“Now, the peculiarity about the old church property was, that nobody had any legal title to it. A log meeting- house had been built there when the country was first settled and land was of no account. In the course of time that was torn down, and a good framed house put up in its place. As it belonged to the whole community, no title, either to the house or land, was ever recorded; and it wasn’t until after the society dissolved that the question came up as to how the property was to be disposed of. While the old deacons were carefully thinking it over, Jedwort was on hand to settle it by putting in his claim.

“‘Now, boys,’ says he, ‘ye see what I’m up to.’

“‘Yes,’ says I, provoked as I could be at the mean trick, ‘and I knew it was some such mischief all along. You never show any enterprise, as you call it, unless it is to get the start of a neighbour.’

“‘But what are you up to, pa?’ says Dan, who didn’t see the trick yet.

“The old man says, ‘I’m goin’ to fence in the rest part of my farm.’

“‘What rest part?’

“‘This part that never was fenced; the old meetin’-house common.’

“‘But, pa,’ says Dave, disgusted as I was, ‘you’ve no claim on that.’

“‘Wal, if I ha’n’t, I’ll make a claim. Give me the crowbar. Now, here’s the corner, nigh as I can squint’; and he stuck the bar into the ground. ‘Make a fence to here from the wall, both sides. Now work spry, for there comes Deacon Talcott.’

“‘Wal, wal!’ says the Deacon, coming up, puffing with excitement; ‘what ye doin’ to the old meetin’-house?’

“‘Wal,’ says Jedwort, driving away at his stakes, and never looking up, ‘I’ve been considerin’ some time what I should do with ’t, and I’ve concluded to make a barn on ’t.’

“‘Make a barn! make a barn!’ cries the Deacon. ‘Who give ye liberty to make a barn of the house of God?’

“‘Nobody; I take the liberty. Why shouldn’t I do what I please with my own prop’ty?’

“‘Your own property—what do ye mean? ’Ta’n’t your meetin’-house.’

“‘Whose is’t, if ’t a’n’t mine?’ says Jedwort, lifting his turtle’s head from between his horizontal shoulders, and grinning in the Deacon’s face.