ittle daughter's action. Gradually, after
numerous personal questions were asked and answered on both sides, the
conversation came around to the difficulty the little family was in, and
the cause of it.

Henry Sherwood listened to the story of the Scotch legacy with wide-open
eyes, marveling greatly. The possibility of his brother's wife becoming
wealthy amazed and delighted his simple mind. The fact that they had to
take the long journey to Scotland to obtain the money troubled him but
little. Although he had never traveled far himself, save to Chicago from
the Michigan woods, Mr. Henry Sherwood had lived in the open so much
that distances did not appall him.

"Sure you'll go," he proclaimed, reaching down into a very deep pocket
and dragging to light a long leather pouch, with a draw-string of
home-cured deer skin. "And if you are short, Bob, we'll go down into
this poke and see what there is left.

"I came down to Chicago to see about a piece of timber that's owned by
some sharps on Jackson Street. I didn't know but I might get to cut that
timber. I've run it careless-like, and I know pretty near what there is
in it. So I said to Kate:

"'I'll see Bob and his wife, and the little nipper-----"

"Goodness!" ejaculated Nan, under her breath.

Uncle Henry's eyes twinkled and the many wrinkles about them screwed
up into hard knots. "Beg pardon!" he exclaimed, for his ears were very
sharp. "This young lady, I should have said. Anyhow, I told Kate I'd see
you all and find out what you were doing.

"Depending on mills and such for employment isn't any very safe way to
live, I think. Out in the woods you are as free as air, and there aren't
so many bosses, and you don't have to think much about 'the market' and
'supply and demand,' and all that."

"Just the same," said Mr. Robert Sherwood, his own eyes twinkling, "you
are in some trouble right now, I believe, Hen?"

"Sho! You've got me there," boomed his brother with a great laugh.
"But there aren't many reptiles like old Ged Raffer. And we can thank
a merciful Creator for that. I expect there are just a few miserly old
hunks like Ged as horrible examples to the rest of us."

"What is the nature of your trouble with this old fellow?" asked Mr.
Robert Sherwood.

"We've got hold on adjoining options. I had my lines run by one of the
best surveyors in the Peninsula of Michigan. But he up and died. Ged
claims I ran over on his tract about a mile. He got to court firs