( 35 ) 



A good old woman had for all her worldly 

 goods, but one collar of Wampum, worth about 

 ten crowns of our money, and which me carried 

 about with her every where in a little bag. One 

 day as me was at work in the fields, fhe chanced to 

 hang her bag on a tree ; another woman who per- 

 ceived it and had a great defire to filch her collar 

 from her, thought the prefent a favourable occafion 

 for feizing it, without being liable to be accufed of 

 theft : fhe therefore kept her eye continually upon 

 it ; and, in about the fpace of an hour or two, the 

 old woman having gone into the next field, fhe 

 flies to the tree, feizes the bag, and falls a crying 

 how lucky fhe had been to find fo valuable a 

 prize. The old woman turns immediately about 

 and fays the bag belonged to her, and that it was 

 flie who had hung it on the tree, that me had nei- 

 ther loft it nor forgot it, and that fhe intended to 

 take it down, when her work mould be over •, her 

 adverfary made anfwer, that we are not to judge 

 the intentions, and that having quitted the field 

 without taking down her bag, me was deemed in 

 law to have forgot it. 



After many contentions between thefe two wo- 

 men, who never fpoke fo much as one difobli- 

 ging word the whole time ; the affair was brought 

 before an arbiter who was the chief of the vil- 

 lage : " according to the rigor/' fays he, <c the 

 " bag is the property of the finder ; but the cir- 

 * c cumftances of the thing are fuch, that if this 

 <s woman would not be taxed with avarice, fhe 

 ** ought to reftore it to the claimant, and be 

 <c fatisfied with fome little prefent, which the o^ 

 * c ther cannot in reafon refufe her. 3 ' Both pair- 

 ties acquiefced in this judgment j and it is pro- 



D 2 per 



