"No, sah. He 's gone somewha's. An' he ain' come back. Mos' all de men folks is gone away." "Has Miss Alice got back yet?" "No, sah. She's off to de school-house in Boston yet. An' it ain't leff out. She 's gwine be back dis spring." "What's cattle bringing now?" "Dunno, sah. I heah dey 's done riz." "Has little Johnnie Martin got his curls cut yet?" "No, sah. Ah seed 'em on him." "What's doing in town? Anything new there?" "No, sah. Jes' 'bout de same as usual." Uncle Israel, feeling that his information had not been very abundant, scratched his head and stirred his mind up thoroughly for news. He met the demand with two pieces of information. "De railroad's done built a new loadin'-pen. An' dat high-tone bull took sick wif acclimatin'. But we 's got him restin' easy now." "The railroad's getting real extravagant, ain't it?" commented Jonas, turning his attention to the oxen again. Having said a few words appropriate to the occasion of starting up, he flung out his bullwhip in a flourish of aerial penmanship and drove home the aforesaid remarks with a startling report. Again the bovine procession got under way. In the course of time he came to where Claxton road ends and Claxton Road begins. It will be recalled that Claxton road, hemmed in by barb wire, leads interminably past vacant stretches of prairie with occasionally a farm and farmhouse. Nearing town its scene and atmosphere suddenly change. On the left are the ranchmen's home estates, with the stables and windmills and short avenues of china-berry trees leading up to comfortable porches; to the right, or facing these, is a large square of green with no roadside houses and no longer any confining fence. To any one who had come a long distance between the barb wires, this emergence upon the free, open common was very much as if he had been following a stream which, after long confinement to its course, opens out suddenly into a lake. This piece of land was not different from the prairie it had always been, except that the houses which faced it on all sides, as if it were a lake of the summer-resort variety, gave it an importance which was not its own. It was no more nor less than a square of primeval prairie whose owner, being satisfied with it, let it be as it was. Surrounded on all sides by real estate and other improvements, it held its own as immovably as if Texas had here taken her last stand, in hollow square, against the encroachments of civilization. It belonged to Jonas Hicks. In the exact middle of it was the paintless frame house which we have already mentioned.