I still had some corn for my cattle, of the original supply which I had got from Rucker in Madison. Hay was fifteen dollars a ton, and all it cost the producer was a year's foresight and the labor of putting it up; for there were millions of acres of wild grass going to waste which made the sweet-smelling hay that old horsemen still prefer to tame hay. It hadn't quite the feeding value, pound for pound, that the best timothy and clover has; but it was a wonderful hay that could be put up in the clear weather of the fall when the ground is dry and warm, and cured so as to be free from dust. My teams never got the heaves when I fed prairie hay. It graveled me like sixty to pay such a price, but I had to do it because the season was just between hay and grass. Sometimes I thought of waiting over until the summer of 1856 to make hay for sale to the movers; but having made my start for my farm I could not bring myself to give up reaching it that spring. So I only waited occasionally to break in or rest up the foot-sore and lame cattle for which I traded from time to time. The Fewkes family went on after I had given them some butter, some side pork and a milking of milk. While I was baking pancakes that last morning, Rowena came to my fire, and snatching the spider away from me took the job off my hands, baking the cakes while I ate. She was a pretty girl, slim and well developed, and she had a fetching way with her eyes after friendly relations were established with her--which was pretty hard because she seemed to feel that every one looked down on her, and was quick to take offense. "Got any saleratus?" she asked. "No," said I. "Why?" She stepped over to the Fewkes wagon and brought back a small packet of saleratus, a part of which she stirred into the batter. "It's gettin' warm enough so your milk'll sour on you," said she. "This did. Don't you know enough to use saleratus to sweeten the sour milk? You better keep this an' buy some at the next store." "I wish I had somebody along that could cook," said I. "Can't you cook?" she asked. "I can." I told her, then, all about my experience on the canal; and how we used to carry a cook on the boat sometimes, and sometimes cooked for ourselves. I induced her to sit by me on the spring seat which I had set down on the ground, and join me in my meal while I told her of my adventures. She seemed to forget her ragged and unwashed dress, while she listened to the story of my voyages from Buffalo to Albany, and my side trips to such places as Oswego. This canal life seemed powerfully thrilling to the poor girl. She could only tell of living a year or so at a time on some run-down or never run-up farm in Indiana or Illinois, always in a log cabin in a clearing; or of her brothers and sisters who had been "bound out" because the family was so large; and now of this last voyage in search of an estate in Negosha. "I can make bread," said she, after a silence. "Kin you?"