Besides the farm work we had to look
after the hardwood flooring mill that summer and the white-birch dowel
mill. For several days toward the end of June we did not even have time
to go up to the spring for our usual supply of water. But we kept Jim
Doane there under instructions to attend carefully to the putting up of
the water. It was his sole business, and he seemed to be attending to it
properly. He was at the spring every day and boarded at the house of a
neighbor, named Murch, who lived nearer to Nubble Hill than we did.
Every day, too, we noticed the smoke of the fire under the kettle in
which he heated water for scalding out the casks.
The first hint we had that things were going wrong was when Willis Murch
told Addison that Doane had been on a spree, and that for several days
he had been so badly under the influence of liquor that he did not know
what he was about.
On hearing that news Addison and the old Squire hastened to the spring.
Jim was there, sober enough now, and working industriously. But he
looked bad, and his account of how he had done his work for the last
week was far from clear. The old Squire gave him another job at the
dowel mill and stationed his brother, Asa Doane, a strictly temperate
man, at the spring.
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