along Williston Road.

The cottages which faced this place on the side toward town were
confined to "lots" along an unpaved street. Across on Claxton Road
town lots grew to the size of country estates and looked more
commanding. But the shack house, with its twenty acres of elbow room,
rather commanded them all, especially as its central position marked
the common as its own grounds. Being tall and upright and spare, like
a Texan, it had an attitude toward them like that of a pioneer
drill-master; it seemed to be standing out on the drill-grounds with
the other houses all marshaled up before it and toeing the social line.

The place was given shape and form entirely by the other property, all
of which was fenced on its own side of the highway, the owner of the
twenty acres never having shut it off from the roads which passed along
two sides of it. This hospitable openness was a fortunate thing for
the traveling public, affording as it did a short cut to town. Quite a
little of the traffic that came down Williston Road turned out and
followed the trail which led diagonally across it past the door of the
house. And usually the traveler, whether horseman or driver, would
speak in passing; or, more likely, stop to have a talk with Jonas
Hicks, who, if he were at home, might be engaged in plaiting a whip or
mixing batter for pancakes or taking a stitch in his clothes, the iron
seat of a "prairie-busting" plow being particularly hard on the seat of
a man's trousers. It was to this place that the plowman was bending
his homeward way.

Eventually, as oxen always do, they arrived. Having navigated them up
to the kitchen door and brought them to a stop with a stentorian _Wo_,
he unhooked the wheelers, dropped the chain from each yoke, and turned
them loose to graze or lie down as each pair might decide; then he went
around the corner of the house and set to work making a fire in the
stove. It was an outdoor stove of the locomotive variety, having two
large iron wheels upon which it had traveled thousands of miles in the
service of the J. W. Cattle Company. Mr. Hicks had fastened its tongue
or handle to a staple in the chimney of the house, for which chimney it
had no use, having a smoke-stack of its own.

When the stove was belching forth smoke he turned his attention to the
inside of the house. Presently he came out with a pan of flour and
various kitchen utensils which he placed on a bench beside the door;
then h