I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go through the high board fence.  There was an inch of new snow on the ground, and I seen somebody's tracks.  They had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden fence.  It was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so.  I couldn't make it out.  It was very curious, somehow.  I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first.  I didn't notice anything at first, but next I did.  There was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.

I was up in a second and shinning down the hill.  I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody.  I was at Judge Thatcher's as quick as I could get there.  He said:

"Why, my boy, you are all out of breath.  Did you come for your interest?"

"No, sir," I says; "is there some for me?"

"Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night—over a hundred and fifty dollars.  Quite a fortune for you.  You had better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it."

"No, sir," I says, "I don't want to spend it.  I don't want it at all—nor the six thousand, nuther.  I want you to take it; I want to give it to you—the six thousand and all."

He looked surprised.  He couldn't seem to make it out.  He says:

"Why, what can you mean, my boy?"

I says, "Don't you ask me no questions about it, please.  You'll take it—won't you?"

He says:

"Well, I'm puzzled.  Is something the matter?"

"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothing—then I won't have to tell no lies."

He studied a while, and then he says:

"Oho-o!  I think I see.  You want to _sell_ all your property to me—not give it.  That's the correct idea."

Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says:

"There; you see it says 'for a consideration.'  That means I have bought it of you and paid you for it.  Here's a dollar for you.  Now you sign it."

So I signed it, and left.