"Just like the old woman on a broomstick in Mother Goose," Mrs. Buck informed the hen and then since there was no hurry about the potatoes she fell to dreaming again. It was very peaceful on the shady porch with that whirlwind of a Judy gone for several hours on one of her crazy peddling jaunts. What a girl she was for plunging! Again the mother wondered where she came from and for the ten thousandth time agreed with herself that it must be the blood of the Norse sailor cropping out in her energetic daughter. "It might have been the Bucks way back yonder somewhere. Certainly she didn't get any up-and-doing from old Dick Buck or my poor husband." Mrs. Buck always thought and spoke of her husband as her poor husband. That was because he had died in the first year of their marriage. Perhaps a merciful Providence had taken him off before he had time to develop to any great extent the traits that made his father, old Dick Buck, a by-word in the county as being the laziest and most altogether no-account white man in Kentucky. Her thoughts drifted back to her childhood in New England. She could barely remember the old white farmhouse with its faded green shutters that rattled so dismally in the piercing winds that seemed to single out the Knight house as it swept down between the hills. She recalled vividly the discussion carried on between her parents in regard to their mode of moving West--whether by wagon or rail--and the final decision to go by wagon because in that way they might save not only railroad fare but the bony team. Furniture was packed ready for shipment and stored in a neighbor's barn until they were sure in just what part of the West they would settle. California had been their goal, but Kentucky seemed far enough. They had stopped for a while in Ryeville with an old neighbor from New England and, hearing of a farm owned by one Dick Buck that was to be sold for taxes, they determined to abandon the journey to California and put what savings they had on this farm. The mortgage went with the farm. That Ezra Knight bargained for, but what he had not bargained for was that old Dick Buck and his son, young Dick, also were included in the purchase. They lived in a two-room log house, a little behind the site Ezra had selected for his own domicile. This was the natural place to build, since the land sloped gently from it, giving a proper drainage, and then the well was already there and a wonderfully good well it was.