miles for dinner. Such are the attractions of corn
bread and chicken when prepared by the hands of a real genius gone
astray on this much-miscooked world.

Many other guests were among those "locators," who came out to
Ellisville and drove to the south in search of "claims." These usually
travelled over the route of Sam, the stage-driver, who carried the mail
to Plum Centre during its life, and who never failed to sound the
praises of the Halfway House. Thus the little Southern family quickly
found itself possessed of a definite, profitable, and growing business.
Buford was soon able to employ aid in making his improvements. He
constructed a large dugout, after the fashion of the dwelling most
common in the country at that time, This manner of dwelling,
practically a roofed-over cellar, its side-walls showing but a few feet
above the level of the earth, had been discovered to be a very
practical and comfortable form of living place by those settlers who
found a region practically barren of timber, and as yet unsupplied with
brick or boards. In addition to the main dugout there was a rude barn
built of sods, and towering high above the squat buildings rose the
frame of the first windmill on the cattle trail, a landmark for many
miles. Seeing these things growing up about him, at the suggestion and
partly through the aid of his widely scattered but kind-hearted
neighbours, Major Buford began to take on heart of grace. He foresaw
for his people an independence, rude and far below their former plane
of life, it was true, yet infinitely better than a proud despair.

It was perhaps the women who suffered most in the transition from older
lands to this new, wild region. The barren and monotonous prospect,
the high-keyed air and the perpetual winds, thinned and wore out the
fragile form of Mrs. Buford. This impetuous, nerve-wearing air was
much different from the soft, warm winds of the flower-laden South. At
night as she lay down to sleep she did not hear the tinkle of music nor
the voice of night-singing birds, which in the scenes of her girlhood
had been familiar sounds. The moan of the wind in the short, hard
grass was different from its whisper in the peach trees, and the
shrilling of the coyotes made but rude substitute for the trill of the
love-bursting mocking bird that sang its myriad song far back in old
Virginia.

Aunt Lucy's soliloquizing songs, when she ceased the hymns of her
fervid Methodism, turned