go COMMON SENSE 
health at Ferniebield until that little marsh of a quarter of an acre 
or so had been drained, and I also saw coming towards me witli 
hurried step the irate proprietor. 
“What do you want here?” he asked in his loudest and most 
. churlish tones. “ Don’t you-know you are trespassing ?” 
“JT want to see you,” I replied very quietly. “I see that the hot 
weather has reduced this pond to a marsh, and-it has given chills 
and fever to my wife and servant, and endangers the health of my 
children, and I have come to ask you to drain it.” 
“ Get off my premises. I want none.of your sneaking here... I 
dont propose to drain my ponds for you or any man.” 
“Pardon me,” said I, “I will go if you wish me to do so, but if 
I go away under present conditions I may return in a way that 
you will not like. If you object to drain the marsh, for it is not a 
pond, yourself, will you allow me to do it at my own expense ?” 
The answer was too rough and savage to repeat, and I left him, 
but not until I had used my eyes to good advantage. 
Now, the origin of this pond and marsh, as I after wards. learned, : 
was as follows: The land which was now the source of malaria 
had in former years been quite dry, and was underlaid with a deep 
bed of clay. But on the grounds of Ferniebield, gushing from the 
bosom of the mountain, there was the beautiful spring. which I have 
already mentioned, and which yielded as much water as would fill 
a two-inch pipe. The spring was almost unvarying .in its flow. 
Wells might go dry and streams shrink, but this little spring always 
seemed to be full. Not many years back, however, it had flowed 
across Ferniebield in a diagonal direction, and the old water-course 
was still visible throughout its entire length. But a violent. “ thun- 
der spate” had sent a torrent down the hillside—a flood the like 
of which no inhabitant could rememlber—and this flood had passed 
over the spring, and opened for it and for itself a. new and wider 
channel, through which the waters of the rivulet had ever: after 
flowed. Formerly they, had flowed past “ Nabal’s” property ; now 
they flowed directly into it, and he had taken advantage of. this 
fact and constructed costly ponds and fountains, which. were sup- 
plied by this new accession to his property. Now, if he had been 
