ed from helping his father manage the farm was more like him, but
they contrived to stir the boy up--with the hot end of the boom, too. So
when a fellow came along one day and offered old Dryfoos a cool hundred
thousand for his farm, it was all up with Dryfoos. He'd 'a' liked to 'a'
kept the offer to himself and not done anything about it, but his vanity
wouldn't let him do that; and when he let it out in his family the girls
outvoted him. They just made him sell.

"He wouldn't sell all. He kept about eighty acres that was off in some
piece by itself, but the three hundred that had the old brick house
on it, and the big barn--that went, and Dryfoos bought him a place in
Moffitt and moved into town to live on the interest of his money. Just
What he had scolded and ridiculed everybody else for doing. Well, they
say that at first he seemed like he would go crazy. He hadn't anything
to do. He took a fancy to that land-agent, and he used to go and set in
his office and ask him what he should do. 'I hain't got any horses, I
hain't got any cows, I hain't got any pigs, I hain't got any chickens. I
hain't got anything to do from sun-up to sun-down.' The fellow said the
tears used to run down the old fellow's cheeks, and if he hadn't been
so busy himself he believed he should 'a' cried, too. But most o' people
thought old Dryfoos was down in the mouth because he hadn't asked more
for his farm, when he wanted to buy it back and found they held it at a
hundred and fifty thousand. People couldn't believe he was just homesick
and heartsick for the old place. Well, perhaps he was sorry he hadn't
asked more; that's human nature, too.

"After a while something happened. That land-agent used to tell Dryfoos
to get out to Europe with his money and see life a little, or go and
live in Washington, where he could be somebody; but Dryfoos wouldn't,
and he kept listening to the talk there, and all of a sudden he caught
on. He came into that fellow's one day with a plan for cutting up the
eighty acres he'd kept into town lots; and he'd got it all plotted out
so-well, and had so many practical ideas about it, that the fellow was
astonished. He went right in with him, as far as Dryfoos would let him,
and glad of the chance; and they were working the thing for all it was
worth when I struck Moffitt. Old Dryfoos wanted me to go out and see the
Dryfoos & Hendry Addition--guess he thought maybe I'd write it up; and
he drove me out there himself. Well