When he came up to the house at noon to feed the stock and make his own frugal meal in the farm house kitchen, the posts were cut. After dinner he harnessed the horse to the farm wagon, and went down for the posts, taking the rolls of wire along to drop beside the fence. The horse was a steady, willing creature, and seemed to have no tricks. He did not drive very well on the road, of course; but that wasn't what they needed a horse for. Driving was a secondary matter. Hiram loaded his posts and hauled them to the pasture, driving inside the fence line and dropping a post wherever one had rotted out. Yet posts that had rotted at the ground were not so easy to draw out, as the young farmer very well knew, and he set his wits to work to make the removal of the old posts easy of accomplishment. He found an old, but strong, carpenter's horse in the shed, to act as a fulcrum, and a seasoned bar of hickory as a lever. There was never an old farm yet that didn't have a useful heap of junk, and Hiram had already scratched over Uncle Jeptha's collection of many years' standng. He found what he sought in a wrought iron band some half inch in thickness with a heavy hook attached to it by a single strong link. He fitted this band upon the larger end of the hickory bar, wedging it tightly into place. A short length of trace chain completed his simple post-puller. And he could easily carry the outfit from place to place as it was needed. When he found a weak or rotting post, he pulled the staples that held the strands of wire to it and and then set the trestle alongside the post. Resting the lever on the trestle, he dropped the end link of the chain on the hook, looped the chain around the post, and hooked on with another link. Bearing down on the lever brought the post out of the ground every time. With a long-handled spade Hiram cleaned out the old holes, or enlarged them, and set his new posts, one after the other. He left the wires to be tightened and stapled later. It was not until the next afternoon that he worked down as far as the water-hole. Meanwhile he had seen nothing of the neighbors and neither knew, nor cared, whether they were watching him or not. But it was evident that the Dickersons had kept tabs on the young farmer's progress, for, he had no more than pulled the posts out of the water-hole and started to reset them on the proper line, than the long-legged Pete Dickerson appeared. “Hey, you!” shouted Pete. “What are you monkeying with that line fence for?” “Because I won't have time to fix it later,” responded Hiram, calmly. “Fresh Ike, ain't yer?” demanded young Dickerson. He was half a head taller than Hiram, and plainly felt himself safe in adopting bullying tactics. “You put them posts back where you found 'em and string the wires again in a hurry--or I'll make yer.” “This is Mrs. Atterson's fence,” said Hiram, quietly. “I have made inquiries about the line, and I know where it belongs.”