I had dropped as tidbits for him.

I drove and drove. The sun neared the horizon now It was
about six o'clock. The poplar thickets on both sides of
the road began to be larger. In front the trail led
towards a gate in a long, long line of towering cottonwoods.
What was beyond?

It proved to be a gate indeed. Beyond the cottonwoods
there ran an eastward grade lined on the north side by
a ditch which I had to cross on a culvert. It will
henceforth be known as the "twelve-mile bridge." Beyond
the culvert the road which I followed had likewise been
worked up into a grade. I did not like it, for it was
new and rough. But less did I like the habitation at the
end of its short, one-mile career. It stood to the right,
close to the road, and was a veritable hovel. [Footnote:
It might be well to state expressly here that, whatever
has been said in these pages concerning farms and their
inhabitants, has intentionally been so arranged as not
to apply to the exact localities at which they are
described. Anybody at all familiar with the district
through which these drives were made will readily identify
every natural landmark. But although I have not consciously
introduced any changes in the landscape as God made it,
I have in fairness to the settlers entirely redrawn the
superimposed man-made landscape.] It was built of logs,
but it looked more like a dugout, for stable as well as
dwelling were covered by way of a roof with blower-thrown
straw In the door of the hovel there stood two brats--poor