“What you said about Wisconsin,” said Bill, winking at me, “has sort of got us all worked up.”

“Is it a good country for a boy to locate in?” I asked.

“A paradise for a boy!” he said, in a kind of bubbly way.  “And for a poor man, it’s heaven!  Plenty of work.  Good wages.  If you want a home, it’s the only God’s country.  What kind of land have you been farming in the past?”

Bill said that he had spent his life plowing the seas, but that all the fault I had was being a landsman.  I admitted that I had farmed some near Herkimer.

“And,” sneered Mr. Wisner crushingly, “how long does it take a man to clear and grub out and subdue enough land in Herkimer County to make a living on?  Ten years!  Twenty years!  Thirty years!  Why, in Herkimer County a young man doesn’t buy anything when he takes up land:  he sells something!  He sells himself to slavery for life to the stumps and sprouts and stones!  But in Wisconsin you can locate on prairie land ready for the plow; or you can have timber land, or both kinds, or opening’s that are not quite woods nor quite prairie—­there’s every kind of land there except poor land!  It’s a paradise, and land’s cheap.  I can sell you land right back of Southport, with fine market for whatever you raise, on terms that will pay themselves—­pay themselves.  Just go aboard the first boat, and I’ll give you a letter to my partner in Southport—­and your fortunes will be made in ten years!”

“The trouble is,” said Bill, “that we’ll be so damned lonesome out where we don’t know any one.  If we could locate along o’ some of our ol’ mates, somebody like old John Tucker,—­it would be a—­a paradise, eh, Jake?”

“The freest-hearted people in the world,” said Mr. Wisner.  “They’ll travel ten miles to take a spare-rib or a piece of fresh beef to a new neighbor.  Invite the stranger in to stay all night as he drives along the road.  You’ll never miss your old friends; and probably you’ll find old neighbors most anywhere.  Why, this country has moved out to Wisconsin.  It won’t be long till you’ll have to go there to find ’em—­ha, ha, ha!”

“If we could find a man out there named Tucker—­”

“An old—­sort of—­of relative of mine,” I put in, seeing that Bill was spoiling it all, “John Rucker.”

“I know him!” cried Wisner.  “Kind of a tall man with a sandy beard?  Good talker?  Kind of plausible talker?  Used to live down east of Syracuse?  Pretty well fixed?  Went out west three years ago?  Calls himself Doctor Rucker?”

“I guess that’s the man,” said I; “do you know where he is now?”

“Had a wife and no children?” asked Wisner.  “And was his wife a quiet, kind of sad-looking woman that never said much?”

“Yes!  Yes!” said I.  “If you know where they are, I’ll go there by the next boat.”

“Hum,” said Wisner.  “Whether I can tell you the exact township and section is one thing; but I can say that they went to Southport on the same boat with me, and at last accounts were there or thereabouts—­there or thereabouts.”