little man stared; and in the silence following, a
hungry-looking bird-dog thrust his thin muzzle in at the door, and
sniffed.

"Get out," shouted the owner at the intruder, adding in extenuation:
"I'm busy." He certainly was "jiggered."

Ichabod came to the rescue.

"I called to learn how one goes at it to take a claim," he explained.
"The _modus operandi_ isn't exactly clear in my mind."

The agent braced up in his chair.

"I suppose you'll say it's none of my business," he commented, "but as
a speculation you'd do a lot better to buy up the claims of poor
cusses who have to relinquish, than to settle yourself."

"I'm not speculating. I expect to build a house, and live here."

"As a friend, then, let me tell you you'll never stand it." A stubby
thumb made motion up the narrow street. "You see this town. I won't
say what it is--you realize for yourself; but bad as it is, it's
advanced civilization alongside of the country. You'll have to go ten
miles out to get any land that's not taken." He stopped and lit his
pipe. "Do you know what it means to live alone ten miles out on the
prairie?"

"I've never lived in the country."

"I'll tell you, then, what it means." He put down his pipe and looked
out at the open door. His face changed; became softer, milder,
younger. His voice, when he spoke, added to the impression of
reminiscence, bearing an almost forgotten tone of years ago.

"The prairie!" he apostrophized. "It means the loneliest place on
God's earth. It means that living there, in life you bury yourself,
your hopes, your ambitions. It means you work ever to forget the
past--and fail. It means self, always; morning, noon, night; until the
very solitude becomes an incubus. It means that in time you die, or,
from being a man, become as the cattle." The speaker turned for the
first time to the tall man before him, his big blue eyes wide open and
round, his voice an entreaty.

"Don't move into it, man. It's death and worse than death to such as
you! You're too old to begin. One must be born to the life; must
never have known another. Don't do it, I say."

Ichabod Maurice, listening, read in that appeal, beneath the words,
the wild, unsatisfied tale of a disappointed human life.

"You are dissatisfied, lonesome--There was a time years ago
perhaps--"

"I don't know." The glow had passed and the face was old again, and
heavy. "I remember nothing. I'm dead, dead." He drew a rough map from
his pocket and s