“The old meeting-house stood on an open common, at the northeast 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 the land was of no account. In the course of time that was torn down, and a good frame 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, Jed-wort 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 neighbor. Then you are wide awake; then you are busy as the Devil in a gale of wind.'
“'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.'
“'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.'
“'Sho, pa!' says Dan, looking bewildered; 'ye a'n't goin' to fence in the old meetin'-house, be ye?'
“'That's jest what I'm goin' to do. Go and git some big stuns from the wall--the biggest ye can find, to rest the corners of the fence on. String the rails along by the road, Stark, and go for another load. Don't stand gawpin' there!'