CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH
PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS
On the day following, which was Saturday, at about three o'clock in
the afternoon, Perez Hamlin was at work in the yard behind the house,
shoeing his horse in preparation for the start west the next week.
Horse shoeing was an accomplishment he had acquired in the army, and
he had no shillings to waste in hiring others to do anything he could
do himself. As he let the last hoof out from between his knees, and
stood up, he saw Israel Goodrich and Ezra Phelps coming across the
yard toward him. Ezra wore his working suit, sprinkled with the meal
dust of his gristmill, and Israel had on a long blue-woolen farmer's
smock, reaching to his knees, and carried in his hand a hickory-handled
whip with a long lash, indicating that he had come in his cart, which
he had presumably left hitched to the rail fence in front of the house.
After breaking ground by a few comments on the points of Perez' horse,
Israel opened the subject of the visit, as follows:
"Ye see, Perez, I wuz over't Mill-Holler arter a grist o' buckwheat,
an me 'n Ezry got ter talkin baout the way things wuz goin in the
village. I s'pose ye've hearn o' the goins on.
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