the tip of his little finger on the
place as represented on the map. "Now coming down square on to the
town-site is this eighty-acre lot; lays beautiful to the town, the
main street running right up to it. And through that street,"
continued he, impressively, "must go all the travel to the important
places beyond. And by and by, when the immigration gets strong enough,
the owner of that piece of land will hev corner lots and sich to sell.
Let me show jist how it lays;" and crossing the bridge, and passing up
the projected street, he stopped the horses on a gentle rise of
ground, forming the nearest point in the eighty acres. "There," he
continued, referring to the map again, "you see the eighty-acre lot
runs lengthwise from the town. Across it runs a tributary of the
river--just down there where you see the plum and bass-wood trees;
and beyond that are ten acres of the richest and easiest-worked river
bottom that the sun ever shone on--all fenced; then follers thirty
acres of young and valuable timber land. Here's your building spot
right here where we stand, in sight of everybody, and all the travel,
handy to the store, and saw-mill, and post-office, and sich, and handy
to meetin'; and the ten acres of alluvial, rich as the richest, and
finely pulverized as powder,--you ken plough it or hoe it jist as easy
as you ken turn your hand over,--will give you all the sarce you want,
and something to sell. And there's wood enough down over the place to
keep yer fires a going; and when you want to pre-empt, jist sell some
of yer standing timber there, to help pay for the whole, at government
price."

"But," replied the missionary, as the squatter finished his graphic
description, "I see by this chart that this is taken up;" for he had
meanwhile been examining it.

"Well," said the hunter, "whose name's writ down as the owner of this
land?"

"Henry Simonds," said the minister, reading from the paper.

"And do you know who 'Henry Simonds' may be?" asked the hunter. "It's
a young chap jist turned nineteen, and of course not old 'nough to
pre-empt, according to law, and who hasn't lived on this claim a day
in his life. There isn't a sign of a shanty on the place, and the law
requires that every man must show _something_ of a house to prove that
he is an actual settler. That name's a blind. This land jines Smith's,
and he's been carrying on the ten-acre lot over the river, rent free;
and it comes very handy for him to come in o