Going into the furthest of the three rooms into which the first floor was divided, he lighted a lamp that stood on the uncovered pine table, and drawing up a stool, laid the letter before him, scanned it carefully and then jumped up again. No, he would feed the fowls first, else it would be too dark, bring in his water, fix fire and teapot, make all snug,—then for the letter. What was Ivan doing in this little house, and whose house was it? His own, as well as the five acres of rough land that lay about it. Two kinds of people traverse the country nowadays, reviving the dead and dying farms: the idealists with money (more or less) in pocket, seeking to find homes on the old lines wherein to spend it; the immigrant looking for a foothold where he may wrest a living from soil whereon the native would starve. The house, with its three rooms and loft above, was the ruin clinging about its stone chimney that Ivan had spied across the corn field that summer day three years before, one of a dozen such lonely places that had fallen to the town for taxes. Year after year no one had come to pay, and all had fallen away but chimney and stout oak frame. From the moment Ivan had seen its veiled outlines across the wheat field, he had desired it. At first he only thought of it, and walked around it silently on Sunday afternoons. In a few months his tongue loosened to Peter Salop, “Could the place be bought?” “Yes, surely, for the price of the rough land.” So before the second summer came he owned it. Little by little—in the off season when Salop could spare him—board by board had he floored it and closed it in. Odd windows picked up second-hand had followed, a ladder reached the loft chamber; then came the paint, odd cans bought at an auction, bright blue with red for window-frames and door. Next he made a sort of corral of birch brush woven with wild grapevines in one corner where once had been a barn. This meant a poultry-yard; four posts and some boards thereon back of the house stood for a wood-shed. The old well was cleaned out and a swinging bucket geared above it. By the third fall, the rough land was broken up and one little corner spaded and made ready for the vegetable garden to come this spring. Spaded and combed and brushed it was as for a flower-bed, this work largely done by the women, being half the secret of how the immigrant can live upon the bit of land the native scorns. In-doors a few bits of plain furniture, some dishes, pots and pans, and a stove made home; no, one thing more, a little mongrel cur that a year before had followed Ivan from the village, entered the house with him, and on being fed, refused ever after to leave the place, watching all day for his return, and sleeping either on door or hearth-stone, according to the season. * * * * *