Page:Post - Uncle Abner (Appleton, 1918).djvu/172

 answered, "but you can easily get another copy of the newspaper. Are you interested in these lands?"

"No," said Abner, "but I am interested in this notice."

Then he laid the newspaper on the table and sat down in a chair. And then it was that his silence left him and he began to talk.

Abner looked out over the country.

"This is fine pasture land," he said.

Dillworth moved forward in his chair. He was a big man with a bushy chestnut beard, little glimmering eyes and a huge body.

"Why, Abner," he said, "it is the very best land that a beef steer ever cropped the grass on."

"It is a corner of the lands that Daniel Davisson got in a grant from George the Third," Abner continued. "I don't know what service he rendered the crown, but the pay was princely—a man would do king's work for an estate like this."

"King's work he would do," said Dillworth, "or hell's work. Why, Abner, the earth is rich for a yard down. I saw old Hezekiah Davisson buried in it, and the shovels full of earth that the negroes threw on him were as black as their faces, and the sod over that land is as clean as a woman's hair. I was a lad then, but I promised myself that I would one day possess these lands."

"It is a dangerous thing to covet the possession of another," said Abner. "King David tried it and 159