"Five," said Milt, "with the hoss an' two Jerseys an' all the wood in the shed." He was standing in the road beside the modern motor car, a pathetic old figure to me, so like my grandfather in many ways, the last of an ancient order. Poverty, decay, was written on him, as on his farmstead. "It's yours!" I cried. I got out of the car again, and we made arrangements to meet in the village and put the deal through. Then I asked him the question which had been pressing from the first. "Why do you sell?" He pointed toward a distant estate, with great chimneys and gables, crowning a hill. "This hain't my country no more," he said, with a kind of mournful dignity. "It's theirs, and theirs, and theirs. I'm too old ter l'arn ter lick boots an' run a farm fer another feller. I wuz brought up on corn bread, not shoe polish. I got a daughter out in York State, an' she'll take me in if I pay my board. I guess $5,000 'll last me 'bout as long as my breath will. Yer got a good farm here--if yer can afford ter put some money back inter the soil." He looked out over his fields and we looked mercifully into the motor. The professor backed the car around, and we said good-bye. "Hope the bilin' kills all them bugs in the bottle," was the old man's final parting. "Well!" I cried, as we spun down over the bridge at my brook, "I've got a country estate of my own! I've got a home! I've got freedom!" "You've got stuck," said the professor. "He'd have taken $4,000." "What's a thousand dollars, more or less?" said I. "Besides, the poor old fellow needs it worse than I do." "It's a thousand dollars," replied my companion. "Yes, to you," I answered. "You are a professor of economics. But to me it's nothing, for I'm an instructor in English." "And the point is?" "That I'm going back home!" I cried. And I took off my hat and let the April wind rush through my hair. Chapter II MY MONEY GOES AND MY FARMER COMES