"U-m-m, yes; the crackle of the wood and the snap of the coal," said the girl in a dreamy tone. "Home!" I cried, quick as a flash. "It makes me think of home--of the home I used to have," and my eyes blurred. "Here, too! Home!" she replied softly. "Funny, isn't it, that we have so many ideas exactly alike? But I suppose that's because we were both brought up in the country." "In the country!" I exclaimed in surprise. "I thought you were from Chicago." "Oh, no; I'm from the country. I didn't go to Chicago till I was twenty. I lived all my life on a farm in Iowa, till I went up to get a job in Chicago after my father died and I was all alone in the world. We lived in the very wildest part of the State--in the part they call the 'Big Woods.' Oh, I know all about frontier life. And there's hardly any kind of 'roughing it' that I haven't done. I was born to it." She laughed, opening the stove door, for the elbow of the pipe was now red-hot and threatening conflagration to the thin board partition behind, which divided the little room from that of the next lodger. A loud thump upon the board partition startled us. We listened for a few moments,--at first with alarm,--and then realized that the noise was only the protest of a sleepy boarder. Presently, as we continued to talk, the banging of a shoe-heel on the wall grew more insistent. We heard doors opening along the hall, and a high, raucous voice invoked quiet in none too polite phrase. So I said, "Good night," in a whisper and tiptoed to my own door. Thus began my acquaintance with Minnie Plympton--an acquaintance which, ripening later into a warm friendship, was to have an incalculable influence upon my life. II IN WHICH I START OUT IN QUEST OF WORK When I woke up the next morning it was to find a weight of homesickness lying heavy upon my heart--homesickness for something which, alas! no longer existed save in memory. Then I remembered the girl on the floor below, and soon I was dressing with a light heart, eager to hurry down to breakfast. I was somewhat disappointed to find that she had eaten her breakfast and gone. I went out upon the stoop, hailed a newsboy, and sought my skylight bedroom.