n a region now as completely developed as
England, and it goes back to things as raw and primitive as King
Arthur's time. I wonder if his knights were not in the main, pretty
shabby rascals, as bad as Dick McGill--or Cow Vandemark? But Gertrude
has not yet heard all about that night's work.)

"Now," said McGill, "for the others! Load up, and come on. This fellow
will never look behind him!"

But he did!

The next and the last stop, was away down on Section Thirty-five--two
miles farther. I was feeling rather warnble-cropped, because of the
memory of that poor fellow with the tar in his eyes--but I went all
the same.

There was a little streak of light in the east when we got to the place,
but we could not at first locate the claim-jumpers. They had gone down
into a hollow, right in the very corner of the section, as if trying
barely to trespass on the land, so as to be able almost to deny that
they were on it at all, and were seemingly trying to hide. We could
scarcely see their outfit after we found it, for they were camped in
tall grass, and their little shanty was not much larger than a dry-goods
box. Their one horse was staked out a little way off, their one-horse
wagon was standing with its cover on beside a mound of earth which
marked where a shallow well had been dug for water. I heard a rustling
in the wagon as we passed it, like that of a bird stirring in the
branches of a tree.

McGill pounded on the door.

"Come out," he shouted. "You've got company!"

There was a scrabbling and hustling around in the shanty, and low
talking, and some one asked who was there; to which McGill replied for
them to come out and see. Pretty soon, a little doddering figure of a
man came to the door, pulling on his breeches with trembling hands as he
stepped, barefooted, on the bare ground which came right up to the
door-sill.

"What's wanted, gentlemen?" he quavered. "I cain't ask you to come
in--jist yit. What's wanted?"

He had not said two words when I knew him for Old Man Fewkes, whom I
had last seen back on the road west of Dyersville, on his way to
"Negosha." Where was Ma Fewkes, and where were Celebrate Fourth and
Surajah Dowlah? And where, most emphatically, where was Rowena? I
stepped forward at McGill's side. Surely, I thought, they were not going
to tar and feather these harmless, good-for-nothing waifs of the
frontier; and even as I thought it, I saw the glimmering of the fire
they were kindling under the t