The Heritage of the Hills

by Arthur Preston Hankins

He stood with hands on hips today, frowning at the tinkling stream of water running from the rusty length of pipe into the reservoir.

"There's just one thing to do," he remarked to it, "and that's to see if I can't increase your putter-putter. I want to write an article on making the most of a flow of spring water, anyway; and I guess I'll use you for a foundation."

Whereupon he secured pick and shovel and sledge and set about removing the box he had so carefully set in the ground to hold his domestic water.

When the box was out he enlarged the hole, and, when the water had cleared, studied the flow. It seeped out from a fissure in the bedrock—or what he supposed was the bedrock—and it seemed a difficult matter to "get at it." However, he began digging above the point of egress in the resistant blue clay, and late that afternoon was down to bedrock again.

And now when he had washed off the rock he discovered a strange thing. This was that the supposed bedrock was not bedrock at all, but a wall of large stones built by the hand of man. Through a crevice in this wall the water seeped, and when he had gouged out the puttylike blue clay the flow increased fivefold.

He sat down and puzzled over it, expecting the flow to return to normal after some tiny unseen reservoir had been drained of its surplus. But it did not lessen, and had not lessened when night came.

At midnight, thinking about it in bed and unable to sleep, he arose, lighted a lantern, and went down to the spring. The water was flowing just the same as when he had left it.

He was not surprised to find the work of human hands in and about his spring, but this wall of stones was highly irregular. It appeared that, instead of having been built to conserve the water, it was designed to dam up the flow entirely. The old flow was merely seepage through the wall.

He was at it again early next morning, and soon had torn down the wall entirely and thrown out the stones. At least five times as much water was running still. He recalled that Damon Tamroy had said the spring had given more water in Tabor Ivison's day than now.

There was but one answer to the puzzle. For some strange reason somebody since Tabor Ivison's day had seen fit to try to stop the flow from the spring altogether. But who would go to such pains to do this, and hide the results of his work, as these had been hidden? And, above all, why?