o carry away
the purchases that one of their number had already made. It was
bewildering to boys who had been brought up on stories of Black Hawk,
the Prophet, and the Sacs and Foxes of Illinois and Wisconsin. A
Delaware Indian, clad in the ordinary garb of a Western farmer and
driving a yoke of oxen, and employing the same curious lingo used by
the white farmers, was not a picturesque object.

"I allow that sixty dollars is a big price to pay for a yoke of
cattle," said Mr. Howell, anxiously. He was greatly concerned about
the new purchase that must be made here, according to the latest
information. "We might have got them for two-thirds of that money back
in Illinois. And you know that Iowa chap only reckoned the price of
these at forty-five, when we traded with him at Jonesville."

"It's no use worrying about that now, Aleck," said his brother-in-law.
"I know you thought then that we should need four yoke for breaking
the prairie; but, then, you weren't certain about it, and none of the
rest of us ever had any sod-ploughing to do."

"No, none of us," said Sandy, with delightful gravity; at which
everybody smiled. One would have thought that Sandy was a veteran in
everything but farming.

"I met a man this morning, while I was prowling around the settlement,"
said Charlie, "who said that there was plenty of vacant land, of
first-rate quality, up around Manhattan. Where's that, father--do you
know? _He_ didn't, but some other man, one of the New England
Society fellows, told him so."

But nobody knew where Manhattan was. This was the first time they had
ever heard of the place. The cattle question was first to be disposed
of, however, and as soon as the party had finished their breakfast,
the two men and Charlie sallied out through the settlement to look up
a bargain. Oscar and Sandy were left in the camp to wash the dishes
and "clean up," a duty which both of them despised with a hearty
hatred.

"If there's anything I just fairly abominate, it's washing dishes,"
said Sandy, seating himself on the wagon-tongue and discontentedly
eyeing a huge tin pan filled with tin plates and cups, steaming in the
hot water that Oscar had poured over them from the camp-kettle.

"Well, that's part of the play," answered Oscar, pleasantly. "It isn't
boy's work, let alone man's work, to be cooking and washing dishes. I
wonder what mother would think to see us at it?" And a suspicious
moisture gathered in the lad's eyes, as a vis