What on earth the man was doing there, history does not inform us, though it used to be more than hinted among the younger citizens in that neighborhood, that he was prowling about in those woods as a spy on the movements of the boys. They said he was just the man for such business.
Moses did not like the appearance of the face that was lowering on him; and, although he was innocent of the slightest intention of doing any harm on the man's premises, he thought it would be safer for him to walk off than it would be to stay there. So he leaped from the fence, and began, leisurely, to walk home.
"Stop, you young heathen!" said Billy Birch.
The little fellow did stop, and stood as still as the old chestnut tree, against which the lord of those woods was leaning.
"What are you munching there, sir?"
Moses, having no suspicion at all that he had been doing any harm to the estate of the old man, replied, frankly and plainly, that he was eating birch.
"Aha!" said the farmer, "you are, eh? I'll teach you to eat my birch. I'll give you as much birch as you will want for a fortnight!"
And he took the twig which Moses was gnawing out of his hands, and whipped him with it, until he made the poor fellow cry out with pain and mortification.
"There, you thief!" he said, after flogging him to his heart's content, "that will teach you to steal my birch, I guess."
From that day the selfish farmer began to be called Birch, in that section of the country; and it was not many months before his name was almost as effectually changed as if he had applied to the legislature of the state to have that body change it for him.