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Purdee too was all a-quiver with eagerness. He had not beheld those rocks since that terrible day when all the fine values of his gifted vision had been withdrawn from him, and he could read no more with eyes blinded by the limitations of what other men could see–the infinitely petty purlieus of the average sense. He had a vague idea that should they say this was his land where those strange rocks lay, he would see again, he would read undreamed-of words, writ with a pen of fire. He started toward them, and then with a conscious effort he held back.

The surveyor took no heed of the sentiments involved in processioning Purdee’s land. He stood leaning on his Jacob’s-staff, as interesting to him as Moses’ rocks, and in his view infinitely more useful, and wiped his brow, and looked about, and yawned. To him it was merely the surveying for a foolish cause of a very impracticable and steep tract of land, and the only reason it should be countenanced by heaven or earth was the fees involved. And this was what he saw at the end of Purdee’s line.

Suddenly he took up his Jacob’s-staff and marched on with a long stride, bearing straight down upon the rocks. The whole cortege started anew–the genuflecting chain-bearers, the dodging, scrambling, running spectators. On one of the strange stunted leafless trees a colony of vagrant crows had perched, eerie enough to seem the denizens of those weird forests; they broke into raucous laughter–Haw! haw! haw!–rising to a wild commotion of harsh, derisive discord as the men once more gave vent to loud, excited cries. For the surveyor, stalking ahead, had passed beyond the great tables of the Law; the chain-bearers were drawing Purdee’s line on the other side of them, and they had fallen, if ever they fell here from Moses’ hand and broke in twain, upon Purdee’s land, granted to his ancestor by the State of Tennessee.

He could not speak for joy, for pride. His dark eyes were illumined by a glancing, amber light. He took off his hat and smoothed with his rough hand his long black hair, falling from his massive forehead. He leaned against one of the stunted oaks, shouldering his rifle that he had loaded for Grinnell–he could hardly believe this, although he remembered it. He did not want to shoot Grinnell; he would not waste the good lead!

And indeed Grinnell had much ado to defend himself against the sneers and rebukes with which the party beguiled the way through the wintry woods. “Ter go a-claimin’ another man’s land, an’ put him ter the expense o’ processionin’ it, an’ git his line run!” exclaimed the blacksmith, indignantly. “An’ ye ‘ain’t got nare sign o’ a show at Moses’ tables!”

“I dunno how this hyar line air a-runnin’,” declared Grinnell, sorely beset. “I don’t b’lieve it air a-runnin’ north.”

The surveyor was hard by. He had planted his staff again, and was once more taking his bearings. He looked up for a second.

“Northwest,” he said.

Grinnell stared for a moment; then strode up to the surveyor, and pointed with his stubby finger at a word on his deed.

The official looked with interest at it; he held up suddenly Purdee’s grant and read aloud, “From Crystal Spring seven hundred poles northwest to a stake in the middle of the river.”

He examined, too, the original plat of survey which he had taken to guide him, and also the plat made when Squire Bates sold to Grinnell’s father; “northwest” they all agreed. There was evidently a clerical error on the part of the scrivener who had written Grinnell’s deed.

In a moment the harassed man saw that through the processioning of Purdee’s land he had lost heavily in the extent of his supposed possessions. He it was who had claimed what was rightfully another’s. And because of the charge Purdee was the richer by a huge slice of mountain land–how large he could not say, as he ruefully followed the line of survey.