"I feel pretty sick. I guess I won't last long. I've got a brother down in the ravine--his name's Driscoll. He don't know I'm here. Can you get him before morning? I'd like to see his face once before I die." Goskin started up at the mention of the name. He knew Driscoll well. "He your brother? I'll have him here in half an hour." As Goskin dashed out into the storm the musician pressed his hand to his side and groaned. Goskin heard the word "Hurry!" and sped down the ravine to Driscoll's cabin. It was quite light in the room when the two men returned. Driscoll was pale as death. "My God! I hope he's alive! I wronged him when we lived in England, twenty years ago." They saw the old man had drawn the blankets over his face. The two stood a moment, awed by the thought that he might be dead. Goskin lifted the blanket and pulled it down, astonished. There was no one there! "Gone!" cried Driscoll wildly. "Gone!" echoed Goskin, pulling out his cash-drawer. "Ten thousand dollars in the sack, and the Lord knows how much loose change in the drawer!" The next day the boys got out, followed a horse's track through the snow, and lost them in the trail leading toward Pioche. There was a man missing from the camp. It was the three-card-monte man, who used to deny pointblank that he could play the scale. One day they found a wig of white hair, and called to mind how the "stranger" had pushed those locks back when he looked toward the ceiling for inspiration on the night of December 24, 1858. ALL KINDS OF THINGS. George Washington as the Farmer of Mount Vernon--The Dress, Manners, and Personality of John Hancock--Men Whose Names Live in Their Inventions--The Strange Story of a Revolutionary Spy and a Silver Bullet--Treasure Trove in Unexpected Hiding-Places--Political Routes That Have Led to the White House--With Other Items of Interest from Various Sources. _Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK. THE THRIFTY FARMER OF MOUNT VERNON. FIFTEEN SQUARE MILES OF LAND. System of Crop Rotation Made the Wheels Go Round Smoothly on Washington's Plantation. As military leader and statesman, George Washington is the great figure in our history. His greatness as a farmer is not so generally appreciated. Yet as soon as the Revolution ended he turned his attention to agriculture with a keen eye to improve his estate. Finding that the cultivation of tobacco exhausted his land, he gradually substituted grass and wheat, as better suited to the soil. He began a new method of rotation of crops, drawing up an exact scheme by which all his fields were numbered and the crops assigned for several years in advance. The extent of his farming operations appears in the following account, printed many years ago in the _Maine Cultivator_: