the bet about?" Mr. Watson asked, while the other man
stopped to light his pipe.

"Well, you see, Bill bet the Government ten dollars that he could
make a living on this farm, and the Government puts up the farm
against the ten dollars that he can't. That's the way it goes. Nearly
every body wins when they bet with the Government. I made the same
bet twenty years ago, and it would take ten thousand dollars now to
get me off of old seventeen, north half; you see, I won my bet, but
poor Bill lost his. Still, it wasn't a fair race. Bill would have won
it if the Government hadn't put the whiskey in his way. You can be
pretty sure it's whiskey that wins it for the Government nearly every
time when the homesteader loses. You'll win yours, all right, no fear
of that. I made my start when I was nine years old; left home with
the wind in my back--that's all I ever got from home--and I started
right in to make my pile, and I guess I haven't done too bad, eh?
What's that?"

Mr. Watson had not spoken, but the other man nudged him genially and
did not resent his silence at all.

"First money I ever earned was from an old Scotch woman, picking
potatoes at eleven cents a day, and I worked at it twenty-five hours
a day, up an hour before day--there was no night there, you bet, it
was like heaven that way; and then when I got my sixty-six cents,
didn't she take it from me to keep. It was harder to get it back from
her than to earn it--oh, gosh! you know what the Scotch are like. Ye
see, my mother died when I was a little fellow, and the old man
married again, a great big, raw-boned, rangey lady. I says: 'Not for
mine,' when I saw her, and lit out--never got a thing from home and
only had about enough clothes on me to flag a train--and I've
railroaded and worked in lumber shanties. But a farm's the place to
make money. How many of a family have ye?"

"Nine," John Watson said, after some deliberation.

"Well, sir, you'll save a lot of hired help; that's the deuce, payin'
out money to hired help, and feedin' them, too. I lost two of my boys
when they were just little lads, beginnin' to be some good. Terrible
blow on me; they'd a been able to handle a team in a year or two, if
they'd a lived--twins they were, too. After raisin' them for six
years, it was hard--year of the frozen wheat, too--oh, yes, 'tain't
all easy. Now, there's old Bruce Simpson, back there at Pelican Lake.
It would just do you good to be there of a mornin.' He has