f thing generally pay up just as soon as they
are allowed to, and then, if they get a good offer to sell out, they
sell and move off somewhere else, and do the same thing over again."

"People have to pay fees, don't they, Uncle Charlie?" said Sandy. "I
know they used to talk about land-office fees, in Dixon. How much does
it cost in fees to enter a piece of Government land?"

"I think it is about twenty-five dollars--twenty-six, to be exact,"
replied Mr. Bryant. "There comes Younkins," he added, looking down the
trail to the river bank below.

The boys had been washing and putting away the breakfast things while
this conversation was going on, and Sandy, balancing in the air a big
tin pan on his fingers, asked: "How much land can we fellows enter,
all told?" The two men laughed.

"Well, Alexander," said his father, ceremoniously, "We two 'fellows,'
that is to say, your Uncle Charlie and myself, can enter one hundred
and sixty acres apiece. Charlie will be able to enter the same
quantity three years from now, when he will be twenty-one; and as for
you and Oscar, if you each add to your present years as many as will
make you twenty-one, you can tell when you will be able to enter and
own the same amount of land; provided it is not all gone by that time.
Good morning, Mr. Younkins." Sandy's pan came down with a crash on the
puncheon floor.

The land around that region of the Republican Fork had been surveyed
into sections of six hundred and forty acres each; but it would be
necessary to secure the services of a local surveyor to find out just
where the boundaries of each quarter-section were. The stakes were set
at the corner of each section, and Younkins thought that by pacing off
the distance between two corners they could get at the point that
would mark the middle of the section; then, by running lines across
from side to side, thus: [Transcriber's note: An image of a square
subdivided into four smaller squares appears here] they could get at
the quarter-sections nearly enough to be able to tell about where
their boundaries were.

"But suppose you should build a house, or plough a field, on some
other man's quarter-section," suggested Charlie, "wouldn't you feel
cheap when the final survey showed that you had all along been
improving your neighbor's property?"

"There isn't any danger of that," answered Younkins, "if you are smart
enough to keep well away from your boundary line when you are
putting in your i