The Land Claim — page 24: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

20 . THE LAND-CLAIM. - _ The child was not used to argument, nor ‘to express her ‘own convictions very often; therefore she gave for answer not words indeed, but such a look of touching appeal as was petter than a whole chapter of logic. Allen felt his heart give a great bound in answer to it. “Tf you will let us fill your basket with berries, and go home contented with our peaceable intentions, I think I may ~ promise you a happy settlement of the present difficulties. What do you say, Doctor *” “That I shall be very happy to help bring about the promised settlement.” “ Thus urged, the young girl complied pleasantly. She secretly thought, besides, that delay was in this case not “ dangerous,” but, on the contrary, might prove a means of conciliation, by giving her father time to cool his anger, in the bright morning air. Cheered by this hope, her native graciousness of manner returned to her, and she received the heaped up basket with mirthful thanks. “ Good-morning now, Miss Newcome,” Allen had replied ; “ perhaps your father may inyite me home with him, to help eat them.” “JT hope he may,” was the fervent rejoinder; the echo of which answer rung in Allen’s ears, and lit, also, a half-conscious plush on the cheek of the fair child herself, as she remembered her father’s taunts of the previous evening, and feared she had - peen too forward in conyersing with these strangers. In a somewhat altered mood, the young men proceeded on their morning walk, and arrived at the disputed boundary in time to find their stakes already removed, and new ones placed where they cut off a valuable portion of their claim. This alteration prevented their prairie and timber land from joining, as it did before, and spoiled the shapeliness of the claim. The first impulse of either was a disposition to fight it out by force, if necessary—for they had the claim-laws on their side—but, upon remembering their promise to the timid child they had just parted from, a better resolution replaced the promptings of passion. : “ All we can do in the premises,” said Allen, “is to pull up these stakes, as Newcome has done, and put them back in their former places.” , B commiclooks.corn