“Oh, no,” said Sam hurriedly, “not nigh as large as this, but it’s a good town, all right.  Lots on the main street there sold for three hundred dollars last week.  You see, old man Plum has got it figgered out that his town is right in the middle of the United States, ary way you measure it.  We claim the same thing for Ellisville, and there you are.  We’ve got the railroad, and they’ve got my stage line.  There can’t no one tell yet which is goin’ to get the bulge on the other.  If you want to go down there, come over and I’ll fix you up.”

Franklin replied that he would be glad to do so in case he had the need, and was about to turn away.  He was interrupted by the other, who stopped him with an explosive “Say!”

“Yes,” said Franklin.

“Did you notice that girl in the dining room, pony-built like, slick, black-haired, dark eyes—­wears glasses?  Say, that’s the smoothest girl west of the river.  She’s waitin’, in the hotel here, but say” (confidentially), “she taught school onct—­yes, sir.  You know, I’m gone on that girl the worst way.  If you get a chanct to put in a word for me, you do it, won’t you?”

Franklin was somewhat impressed with the swiftness of acquaintanceships and of general affairs in this new land, but he retained his own tactfulness and made polite assurances of aid should it become possible.

“I’d be mightily obliged,” said his new-found friend.  “Seems like I lose my nerve every time I try to say a word to that girl.  Now, I plum forgot to ast you which way you was goin’.  Do you want a team?”

“Thank you,” said Franklin, “but I hardly think so.  I want to find my friend Colonel Battersleigh, and I understand he lives not very far away.”

“Oh, you mean old Batty.  Yes, he lives just out south a little ways—­Section No. 9, southeast quarter.  I suppose you could walk.”

“I believe I will walk, if you don’t mind,” said Franklin.  “It seems very pleasant, and I am tired of riding.”

“All right, so long,” said Sam.  “Don’t you forgit what I told you about that Nora girl.”

Franklin passed on in the direction which had been pointed out to him, looking about him at the strange, new country, in which he felt the proprietorship of early discovery.  He drew in deep breaths of an air delightfully fresh, squaring his shoulders and throwing up his head instinctively as he strode forward.  The sky was faultlessly clear.  The prospect all about him, devoid as it was of variety, was none the less abundantly filling to the eye.  Far as the eye could reach rolled an illimitable, tawny sea.  The short, harsh grass near at hand he discovered to be dotted here and there with small, gay flowers.  Back of him, as he turned his head, he saw a square of vivid green, which water had created as a garden spot of grass and flowers at the stone hotel.  He did not find this green of civilization more consoling or inspiring than the natural colour