The house was known as Rackenshack throughout the neighborhood for miles around. It was a frame structure, originally of sorry workmanship, at least thirty years old, and upon which not a cent's worth of repairing had been done since first erected, wherefore the name was peculiarly appropriate. It was not only old, rickety, paintless, half rotten and sadly sunken at one end, but the fencing around the place was broken, grown over with weeds, and slanted in as many ways as there were panels. The lawn or yard in front of the house had some old cherry trees, gnarled and decaying, growing in what had once been straight rows, but storms and more insidious vicissitudes had twisted and curled them about till they looked as though they had been thrown end foremost at the ground hap-hazard. Under and all round these trees young sprouts, from the scattered cherry seeds of many years of fruiting, had grown so thick that one could with difficulty get through them. A narrow, well-beaten path led from the gate, which lazily lolled on one hinge, up to the decayed and sunken porch, in front of which was the well, with its lop-eared windlass and dilapidated curb and shed. A country thoroughfare, one of the old State roads leading westward to a ferry on the Wabash river near the village of Attica and eastward to either Crawfordsville, Indianapolis or Lafayette. This road was in the direct line of emigration, and in the proper seasons long lines of covered wagons rolled past, the drivers, a jolly set, hallooing to each other and bandying sharp wit and rude sarcasm at the expense of Rackenshack. Poor old house, it leered at the passers, with its windows askew, and clattered its loose boards and battered shutters in utter and complacent defiance of all their jeers! Rackenshack belonged to Luke Plunkett and Betsy, his sister; the latter an old maid beyond all cavil, the former a bachelor of about thirty. The lands of the estate were pretty broad, comprising some two thousand acres of rich prairie and "river bottom" land, which had been kept in a much better state of improvement than the house had. In fact, Luke was considered a careful, industrious, frugal farmer. He had large, well regulated barns and stock sheds and stables--plenty of fine horses, cattle, hogs, sheep and mules, all well fed and cared for, and it was generally understood that he had a pretty round deposit in a bank. Perhaps 'Squire Rube Fink, sometimes called "the Rev. Major Fink" and sometimes "Talking Rube," gives the best description of Luke's condition, habits and surroundings, that I can offer. It is truthful and singularly graphic. He says: