Early in Tuesday’s march a young Swedish farmer picked me up, and carried me on to within five miles of Manning; and, a little west of the town, I fell in with another farmer, who shared his seat with me over six miles of the way. A third lift of a couple of miles into Irwin helped me much on the road to Kirkman. I had not reached the village, however, when night fell. At a farm, a mile or more to the east of it, I found as warm a welcome as on the night before. Supper was ready, and room was made for me; then I lent a hand at the milking with the hired men. Last, before going to bed, we had a swim. The farmer kept for the purpose a pool in the barn-yard which was well supplied with constantly changing water, and nothing could have been more grateful after a day of work and walking in a temperature of 105° in the shade. I should liked to have remained there as a hired man almost as much as with Mr. Hardy, but the journey to Council Bluffs was now well under way, and I was bent upon completing it before another long stop. On Wednesday I wished to reduce as much as possible the distance to Neola, which is a village at the junction of the St. Paul and Rock Island railways; but I had to spend the night a few miles southwest of Shelby. This was because I was not so fortunate as on the day before in the matter of lifts. I got but one drive that day. Turning from Kirkman into the stage-road leading into Harlan, the county-seat of Audubon County, I saw approaching me a buggy containing two men. I stepped aside to let it pass, but it stopped beside me, and one of the men invited me to get in. The country doctor was writ large upon him, and, at his side, was a coatless, collarless, taciturn youth, who clearly was his “hired man.” Crowded between them I sat down, and the physician turned his sharp, genial eyes upon me. “Where are you from?” “Where are you going?” “How old are you?” “What’s your name?” “Where do you expect to go when you die?” “Why don’t you shave?” Such were the questions that, with almost fierce rapidity, he plied me with, waiting meanwhile for but the briefest answer to each. And when the ordeal was over, he laughed a low, shrewd laugh while his eyes twinkled merrily, as he remarked, dryly: “I guess you’ll do.” He allowed me no time to acknowledge the compliment, but went swiftly on: “Do you know that Mr. Frick has been shot and may die?” I did not know it, for I had not seen a newspaper since leaving Algona, and my intercourse had been with farmers whose news reaches them by the weekly press,