HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 209 



at the last of, mild suggestion that you really 

 ought to be getting together somehow about 

 that division fence. That's the way we've found 

 it. I don't take any stock at all now in the 

 romances about family feuds arising over 

 boundary lines and trespasses and such like. 

 They aren't reasonable among farmer-neigh- 

 bors. 



There was one old man on a farm down the 

 valley who was a steady offender. He wasn't 

 exactly a farmer, though he lived on a farm; 

 that is, he didn't work at farming. He owned 

 a few cattle that rustled a living as they could 

 on the poor brush-land he called his pasture. 

 The pasture was inclosed in a happy-go-lucky 

 sort of way by a few strings of rusted old wire ; 

 but half the posts were rotted out and the wires 

 sagged along the ground or were caught up 

 and held in the tangle of bushes. The cows 

 found it no barrier; they strayed where they 

 would, and they were always coming into our 

 crops. The old man had no time to fix his 

 fences; he was too busy sitting on his porch 

 figuring out easy ways to get rich if he only 

 had money enough to get some of his schemes 

 a-going. He was desperately poor, as poor 



