senior, stared in surprise, and her attention being diverted,
Minna the younger seized the opportunity to inundate herself with a
cup of hot coffee.

The spell was broken.

"I'm going to take a homestead," explained Ichabod.

Hans's fork paused in mid-air and his mouth forgot to close. At the
point where the German struck, the earth was very hard.

"So?" he interrogated, weakly.

At this juncture the difference between the two Minnas, which had been
transferred from the table to the kitchen, was resumed; and although
Ichabod ate the remaining kraut to the last shred, and Camilla talked
to Hans of the _Vaterland_ in his native German, each knew the
occasion was a failure. An ideal had been raised, the ideal of a
Napoleon of finance, a banker; and that ideal materializing, lo there
stood forth a farmer! _Ach Gott von Himmel!_

After dinner Hans stood in the doorway and pointed out the land-office.
Ichabod thanked him, and under the impulse of habit felt in his
pocket for a cigar. None was there, and all at once he remembered
Ichabod Maurice did not smoke. Strange he should have such an
abominable inclination to do so just then; but nevertheless the fact
remained. Ichabod Maurice never had smoked.

He started up the street.

A small man, with very high boots and a very long moustache, sat
tipped back in the sun in front of the land-office. He was telling a
story; a good one, judging from the attention of the row of listeners.
He grasped the chair tightly with his left hand while his right,
holding a cob pipe, gesticulated actively. The story halted abruptly
as Ichabod came up.

"Howdy!" greeted the little man.

Maurice nodded.

"Don't let me interrupt you," he temporized.

"Not at all," courtesied the teller of stories, as he led the way
inside. "I've told that one until I'm tired of it, anyway." He tapped
the ashes from his pipe-bowl, meditatively. "A fellow has to kill the
time some way, though, you know."

"Yes, I know," acquiesced Ichabod.

The agent took a chair behind the battered pine desk, and pointed to
another opposite.

"Any way I can help you?" he suggested.

"Yes," answered Maurice. "I'm thinking of taking a homestead."

The agent looked his visitor up and down and back again; then, being
native born, his surprise broke forth in idiom.

"Well, I'm jiggered!" he avowed.

It was Ichabod's turn to make observation.

"I believe you; you look it," he corroborated at length.

Again the