When June came in, matters brightened. The cows had plenty of grass, gave good milk, and Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer made a good many pounds of butter each week, which they sold at Manitou without difficulty. Here at last was a regular source of income; but it was small: "a mere drop in the bucket," Mrs. March said when she was talking over matters with Mrs. Plummer. I must tell you how this butter was made, because it was such a pleasure to Rob and Nelly to watch it. It was made in a little shed which joined on to the old saw-mill, and the old saw-mill wheel did the churning. Wasn't that a funny way? We must give Zeb the credit of this. He was turning the grindstone one day for Deacon Plummer to sharpen up his axes. It is very hard work to turn a grindstone, and Zeb was very tired before the axes were half ground. Suddenly the thought popped into his head, "Why shouldn't I make that old water-wheel turn this grindstone for us?" After dinner he went up to the saw-mill and looked at it. There was the old wooden wheel as good as ever; the gate which had shut the water off and let it on was gone; "but that's easy fixed," said Zeb, and to work he went; and before sundown, he had the water-wheel bobbing round again as fast as need be. The next day he took the grindstone and sunk it in between two old timbers in a broken place in the floor, just back of the wheel; then he put a strap round the grindstone and fastened it to the water-wheel; then he pulled up the little gate, and let the water in the water-wheel. Hurrah! round went the water-wheel, and round went the grindstone keeping exact pace with it! Zeb clapped his knee, which was the same thing as if he had patted himself on the shoulder. "Good for you, Abe Mack!" he said. Then he looked around frightened, to see if anybody had heard him. No one was near. He drew a long breath. "Lord!" he said; "to think o' my saying that name out loud after all this time!" and he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "I'd better be more keerful than that," he said. "I'll get tracked yet, if I don't look out." Two years before, in a fight in a mining town a great many miles north of his present home, Zeb had had the misfortune to kill a man. He never intended to do such a thing. He really drew his pistol in self-defence; but he could not prove this, and he had fled for his life, and had been ever since living hidden away on this lonely farm in the mountains. He had intended to go still farther away where there would be no possibility of his ever being seen by any of the men who had known him before, but he had fallen so in love with these hills he could not tear himself away from them. But he had never told his true name to any one, and when he pronounced it now the sound of it frightened him almost as if it had been a sheriff who was calling him by it.