“I’m going to be a man, Mrs. Wright, and not a blamed fool any longer. Guess I’ll pre-empt some land near the Cherokee Reservation, and stick to it and get the fruits of my toil, anyhow.” “Your principles——” stammered his wife. “Damn principles, Mrs. Wright. I’ve had about enough of them. Common sense is what I want, and so do you. I guess a spell of that will come handy now.” Thus they journeyed out of sight, but a legend came floating back from near the Cherokee lands that at a difficult ford Wright was attacked by a couple of robbers, whereupon he took up that new rifle of his and fired so uncommonly straight that one man fell into the river, and the other ran away. Brother Green remained at his forge, for blacksmiths were much in request on the prairie, and such a one as he was hard to find. The new owner of Perfection City offered him good inducements to stay, so he stayed. He is still there shoeing horses and mending ploughs. The name has been changed to Mountainburg, in order to emphasise the existence of the rising ground over Weddell’s Gully. Brother Green is almost the oldest inhabitant now, and sometimes he thinks of that far-off English village where he was born, and it looks brighter and more beautiful to him as the years roll him away from it. He thinks too of the grass-grown grave in the church-yard where the jackdaws caw overhead, and it seems to him that when his last day’s work shall be done he would rest more peacefully beside that mound than in any other spot beneath the broad canopy of heaven. Brother Dummy decided not to leave when the rest of the Pioneers scattered. He preferred to stay where he was and rent a bit of land from the new owner. By and by he was enabled to buy his bit outright. For there came a letter addressed to “The Pioneers of Perfection City” and containing a draft for five hundred dollars “for the hire of one horse” from an ever grateful friend. And Brother Dummy was given this money by the united wish of Olive, Ezra, Brother Green, and Uncle David, the last of the Pioneers, because, as they said, he was the only one who didn’t know why it had been sent, and he was the only one who had not suffered through that episode that had so nearly wrecked their lives. On a cold winter’s day, when the snow lay in patches on the black prairie, Olive and her husband and Uncle David set out from Perfection City. She was pale and thin, and looked very ill as she stood leaning against the door-way of her dismantled home. “I wish I could feel sorry at leaving the prairie, but I can’t. I never want to see Perfection City again, but I’m sorry for my little home, and I would like to see my garden blossom again.” So spoke Olive to Uncle David, standing beside her with shawls on his arm.