The old system had passed its most important test.
It had not merely worked for a morning.
It had continued supplying water through a dry summer.
For Glenn, that was the difference between an interesting historical discovery and a genuinely useful part of the farm.
The system had proven itself.
As autumn approached, the days shortened and the pasture grass began drying at the tips.
One October afternoon, Glenn decided to walk the entire route of the restored line.
He began at the barn.
The pressure gauge was steady.
The cattle waterers were working.
He stepped outside and followed the subtle depression in the ground where the conduit ran through the lower field.
The line was barely visible.
Just a slight change in the surface.
The kind of feature a person could walk across thousands of times without noticing.
Glenn had done exactly that.
For decades, he had crossed the same pasture without knowing that a wooden water system lay beneath it.
Now he followed the route deliberately.
He walked through the lower field, past the gate, and toward the lane where the tractor blade had first struck the buried timber.
The repaired ground remained slightly darker than the surrounding soil.
Glenn stopped there.
He remembered the dull cracking sound.
The sudden pull of the tractor.
The dark log exposed beneath the gravel.
And the cold, clear water emerging from the two-inch bore.
At the time, he had thought he was looking at an old piece of buried wood.
He had no idea that the discovery would lead him to a survey from 1902, a forgotten ledger entry from 1951, and a water system built in 1887.
He continued uphill.
The pasture rose toward the springhouse.
The grass was pale and thick.
Beyond the upper field, the ridge climbed another two hundred feet.
Glenn reached the stone enclosure and crouched beside the original inlet.
There, at the base of the springhouse wall, the first section of American chestnut conduit entered through an iron collar fitted into the foundation stone.
The wood was dark.
Its grain was tight.
The bore was clear.
And water was moving through it.
Glenn remained there for a while, examining the timber.
He tried to imagine Ezra Trivet and his sons constructing the line.
They had no electric drills.
No powered trenching machines.
No plastic pipe.
They had cut straight chestnut logs, bored holes through their centers with hand tools, fitted iron sleeves, and laid the sections carefully along the hillside.
Every connection had to align.
Every section had to follow the correct slope.
Every access fitting had to be positioned so the conduit could be maintained.