"It's no use worrying about that now, Aleck," said his brother-in-law. "I know you thought then that we should need four yoke for breaking the prairie; but, then, you weren't certain about it, and none of the rest of us ever had any sod-ploughing to do." "No, none of us," said Sandy, with delightful gravity; at which everybody smiled. One would have thought that Sandy was a veteran in everything but farming. "I met a man this morning, while I was prowling around the settlement," said Charlie, "who said that there was plenty of vacant land, of first-rate quality, up around Manhattan. Where's that, father--do you know? _He_ didn't, but some other man, one of the New England Society fellows, told him so." But nobody knew where Manhattan was. This was the first time they had ever heard of the place. The cattle question was first to be disposed of, however, and as soon as the party had finished their breakfast, the two men and Charlie sallied out through the settlement to look up a bargain. Oscar and Sandy were left in the camp to wash the dishes and "clean up," a duty which both of them despised with a hearty hatred. "If there's anything I just fairly abominate, it's washing dishes," said Sandy, seating himself on the wagon-tongue and discontentedly eyeing a huge tin pan filled with tin plates and cups, steaming in the hot water that Oscar had poured over them from the camp-kettle. "Well, that's part of the play," answered Oscar, pleasantly. "It isn't boy's work, let alone man's work, to be cooking and washing dishes. I wonder what mother would think to see us at it?" And a suspicious moisture gathered in the lad's eyes, as a vision of his mother's tidy kitchen in far-off Illinois rose before his mind. Sandy looked very solemn. "But, as daddy says, it's no use worrying about things you can't help," continued the cheerful Oscar; "so here goes, Sandy. You wash, and I'll dry 'em." And the two boys went on with their disagreeable work so heartily that they soon had it out of the way; Sandy remarking as they finished it, that, for his part, he did not like the business at all, but he did not think it fair that they two, who could not do the heavy work, should grumble over that they could do. "The worst of it is," he added, "we've got to look forward to months and months of this sort of thing. Father and Uncle Charlie say that we cannot have the rest of the family come out until we have a house to put them in--a log-cabin, they mean, of course; and Uncle Charlie says that we may not get them out until another spring. I don't believe he will be willing for them to come out until he knows whether the Territory is to be slave or free. Do you, Oscar?"