“What made the smash, then?” demanded Mrs. Kinloch.

“I was settin’ things on the top shelf, and the chair tipped over.”

“Don’t make it worse by fibbing!  If that was so, how came the chair to tip the way it did?  You were trying to peep over the door.  Go to the kitchen!”

Lucy went out with fallen plumes.  Mr. Clamp took his hat to go also.

“Don’t go till I get you the notes,” said Mrs. Kinloch.

As she brought them, he said, “I will send these by the next mail, with instructions to collect.”

While his hand was on the latch, she spoke again:—­

“Mr. Clamp, did you ever look over the deed of the land we own about the dam where the mill stands?”

“No, ma’am, I have never seen it.”

“I wish you would have the land surveyed according to this title,” she said.  “Quite privately, you know.  Just have the line run, and let me know about it.  Perhaps it will be as well to send over to Riverbank and get Gunter to do it; he will keep quiet about it.”

Mr. Clamp stood still a moment.  Here was a woman whom he was expecting to lead like a child, but who on the other hand had fairly bridled and saddled him, so that he was driven he knew not whither.

“Why do you propose this, may I ask, Mrs. Kinloch?”

“Oh, I have heard,” she replied, carelessly, “that there was some error in the surveys.  Mr. Kinloch often talked of having it corrected, but, like most men, put it off.  Now, as we may sell the property, we shall want to know what we have got.”

“Certainly, Mrs. Kinloch, I will follow your prudent suggestions,”—­adding to himself, as he walked away, “I shall have to be tolerably shrewd to get ahead of that woman.  I wonder what she is driving at.”

CHAPTER IV.

Ralph Hardwick was the village blacksmith.  His shop stood on the bank of the river, not far from the dam.  The great wheel below the flume rolled all day, throwing over its burden of diamond drops, and tilting the ponderous hammer with a monotonous clatter.  What a palace of wonders to the boys was that grim and sooty shop!—­the roar of the fires, as they were fed by the laboring bellows; the sound of water, rushing, gurgling, or musically dropping, heard in the pauses; the fiery shower of sparkles that flew when the trip-hammer fell; and the soft and glowing mass held by the smith’s tongs with firm grasp, and turning to some form of use under his practised eye!  How proud were the young amateur blacksmiths when the kind-hearted owner of the shop gave them liberty to heat and pound a bit of nail-rod, to mend a skate or a sled-runner, or sharpen a pronged fish-spear!  Still happier were they, when, at night, with his sons and nephew, they were allowed to huddle on the forge, sitting on the bottoms of old buckets or boxes, and watching the fire, from the paly blue border of flame in the edge of the damp