vegetables out of the holes in the garden.

In the afternoon he had gone to the pond in the woods to cut a
drinking place for the cattle. As he was returning with his axe on
his shoulder, the water on it having instantly frozen, he saw
riding away across the stable lot, the one of their neighbors who
was causing him so much trouble about the buying of the farm. He
stopped hot with anger and watched him.

In those years a westward movement was taking place among the
Kentuckians--a sad exodus. Many families rendered insolvent or
bankrupt by the war and the loss of their slaves, while others
interspersed among them had grown richer by Government contracts,
were now being bought out, forced out, by debt or mortgage, and
were seeking new homes where lay cheaper lands and escape from the
suffering of living on, ruined, amid old prosperous acquaintances.
It was a profound historic disturbance of population, destined
later on to affect profoundly many younger commonwealths. This was
the situation now bearing heavily on David's father, on three sides
of whose fragmentary estate lay rich neighbors, one of whom
especially desired it.

The young man threw his axe over his shoulder again and took a line
straight toward the house.

"He shall not take advantage of my father's weakness again," he
said, "nor shall he use to further his purposes what I have done to
reduce him to this want."

He felt sure that this pressure upon his father lay in part back of