o take 'em to school to Maxfield--goin' to do it ev'ry day."

The incumbent of the log were too nearly paralyzed to remonstrate, but
after a few moments of silence the patriarch remarked, in tones of
feeling, yet decision:

"He's hed a tough time of it, but he's no bizness to ruin the
settlement. I'm an old man myself, an' I need peace of mind, so I'm
goin' to pack up my traps and mosey. When the folks at Maxfield knows
what he's doin', they'll make him a constable or a justice, an' I'm too
much of a man to live nigh any sich."

And next day the patriarch wheeled his family and property to parts
unknown.

A few days later Jim Merrick, a brisk farmer a few miles from the Bend,
stood in front of his own house, and shaded his eyes in solemn wonder.
It couldn't be--he'd never heard of such a thing before yet it
was--there was no doubt of it--there was a Pike riding right toward him,
in open daylight. He could swear that Pike had often visited him--that
is, his wheatfield and corral--after dark, but a daylight visit from a
Pike was as unusual as a social call of a Samaritan upon a Jew. And when
Sam--for it was he--approached Merrick and made his business known, the
farmer was more astonished and confused than he had ever been in his
life before. Sam wanted to know for how much money Merrick would plow
and plant a hundred and sixty acres of wheat for him, and whether he
would take Sam's horse--a fine animal, brought from the States, and for
which Sam could show a bill of sale--as security for the amount until he
could harvest and sell his crop. Merrick so well understood the Pike
nature, that he made a very liberal offer, and afterward said he would
have paid handsomely for the chance.

A few days later, and the remaining Pikes at the Bend experienced the
greatest scare that had ever visited their souls. A brisk man came into
the Bend with a tripod on his shoulder, and a wire chain, and some wire
pins, and a queer machine under his arm, and before dark the Pikes
understood that Sam had deliberately constituted himself a renegade by
entering a quarter section of land. Next morning two more residences
were empty, and the remaining fathers of the hamlet adorned not Sam's
log, but wandered about with faces vacant of all expression save the
agony of the patriot who sees his home invaded by corrupting influences
too powerful for him to resist.

Then Merrick sent up a gang-plow and eight horses, and the tender green
of Sam's