carefully and stowed it away in the cabin to take back home as
evidence of his extensive travels.

For several days we had not been able to have a camp-fire,
owing to the wind and dryness of the prairie, for had we started
a prairie fire it might have done great damage.

"We don't want the Holt County Anti-Prairie Fire Society
after us," Jack had said; so we bad been using our oil-stove.

But this evening was very still, and there seemed to be no
danger in building a camp-fire within the walls of the house, and
we soon had one going with wood which we had gathered along the
river, since to have found wood enough for a camp-fire in that
neighborhood would have been as impossible as to have found a
stone or a spring of water.

We were sitting about on the sods after supper when a man
rode up on horseback, who said he was looking for some lost
stock. We asked him to have something to eat, and he accepted the
invitation, and afterwards talked a long time, and gave us much
information which we wished about the country. Somebody mentioned
the little well, and the man turned to Ollie and said:

"How would you like to slip down such a well?"

"I'm afraid I'm too big," answered Ollie. "Well, perhaps you
are; but there was a child last summer over near where I live who
wasn't too big. He was a little fellow not much over two years
old. The well was a new one, and the curb was almost even with