At this juncture the difference between the two Minnas, which had been transferred from the table to the kitchen, was resumed; and although Ichabod ate the remaining kraut to the last shred, and Camilla talked to Hans of the _Vaterland_ in his native German, each knew the occasion was a failure. An ideal had been raised, the ideal of a Napoleon of finance, a banker; and that ideal materializing, lo there stood forth a farmer! _Ach Gott von Himmel!_ After dinner Hans stood in the doorway and pointed out the land-office. Ichabod thanked him, and under the impulse of habit felt in his pocket for a cigar. None was there, and all at once he remembered Ichabod Maurice did not smoke. Strange he should have such an abominable inclination to do so just then; but nevertheless the fact remained. Ichabod Maurice never had smoked. He started up the street. A small man, with very high boots and a very long moustache, sat tipped back in the sun in front of the land-office. He was telling a story; a good one, judging from the attention of the row of listeners. He grasped the chair tightly with his left hand while his right, holding a cob pipe, gesticulated actively. The story halted abruptly as Ichabod came up. "Howdy!" greeted the little man. Maurice nodded. "Don't let me interrupt you," he temporized. "Not at all," courtesied the teller of stories, as he led the way inside. "I've told that one until I'm tired of it, anyway." He tapped the ashes from his pipe-bowl, meditatively. "A fellow has to kill the time some way, though, you know." "Yes, I know," acquiesced Ichabod. The agent took a chair behind the battered pine desk, and pointed to another opposite. "Any way I can help you?" he suggested. "Yes," answered Maurice. "I'm thinking of taking a homestead." The agent looked his visitor up and down and back again; then, being native born, his surprise broke forth in idiom. "Well, I'm jiggered!" he avowed. It was Ichabod's turn to make observation. "I believe you; you look it," he corroborated at length. Again the 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."