pread it out before him.

"If you'll move close, please, I'll show you the open lands."

For an hour he explained homesteads, preemptions and tree claims, and
the method of filing and proving up. At parting, Ichabod held out his
hand.

"I thank you for your advice," he said.

The man behind the desk puffed stolidly.

"But don't intend to follow it," he completed.

Instinctively, metaphor sprang to the lips of Ichabod Maurice.

"A small speck of circumstance, which is near, obliterates much that
is in the distance." He turned toward the door. "I shall not be
alone."

The little agent smoked on in silence for some minutes, gazing
motionless at the doorway through which Ichabod had passed out. Again
the lean bird-dog thrust in an apologetic head, dutifully awaiting
recognition. At length the man shook his pipe clean, and leaned back
in soliloquy.

"Man, woman, human nature; habit, solitude, the prairie." He spoke
each word slowly, and with a shake of his head. "He's mad, mad; but I
pity him"--a pause--"for I know."

The dog whined an interruption from the doorway, and the man looked
up.

"Come in, boy," he said, in recognition.

CHAPTER III--THE WONDER OF PRAIRIE

Ichabod and Camilla selected their claim together. A fair day's drive
it was from the little town; a half-mile from the nearest neighbor, a
Norwegian, without two-score English words in his vocabulary. Level it
was, as the surface of a lake or the plane of a railroad bed.

Together, too, they chose the spot for their home. Camilla sobbed over
the word; but she was soon dry-eyed and smiling again. Afterwards,
side by side, they did much journeying to and from the nearest
sawmill--each trip through a day and a night--thirty odd miles away.
The mill was a small, primitive affair, almost lost in the straggling
box-elders and soft maples that bordered the muddy Missouri,
producing, amid noisy protestations, the most despisable of all lumber
on the face of the globe--twisting, creeping, crawling cottonwood.

Having the material on the spot, Ichabod built the house himself,
after a plan never before seen of man; joint product of his and
Camilla's brains. It took a month to complete; and in the meantime,
each night they threw their tired bodies on the brown earth,
indifferent to the thin canvas, which alone was spread between them
and the stars.

Too utterly weary for immediate sleep, they listened to the sounds of
animal life--wholly unfamiliar