to God, of Grandpa Ranger's story of a planter and merchant he knew in his youth, of whom it was said that he would call his slaves to their devotions in the morning with a preamble like this: * Have you wet the leather? Have you sanded the sugar? Have you put meal in the pepper and chicory in the coffee? Have you watered the whiskey? Then come in to prayers!'"
The necessities of these farmers were born of isolation; and the opportunities for barter and dicker with passing emigrants stirred the acquisitive spirit within them into vigorous action. The prices of their hitherto unsalable commodities went up to unheard-of figures, increasing in geometrical progression. But Captain Ranger, having created a market in the remote country places in Illinois for supplies of coffee, tea, calico, and unbleached cotton cloth, had prepared himself at Quincy with such commodities, and was able to adjust his trade somewhat to the law of supply and demand.
Oh, those teamsters of the plains! No jollier crowd of brave, enduring, accommodating men ever cracked cruel whips over the backs of long-enduring oxen, or plodded more patiently than they beside the slowly moving wagons, as, wading often over shoe-tops through the muck and mire of the Missouri roads of early springtime, they jollied one another and cracked their whips and sang. Each misfit nickname was accepted as a joke, and none of the men inquired as to the origin of his peculiar cognomen. But Hal, being more inquisitive than they, asked troublesome questions of his sisters, who were in the secret.
"Better tell him, girls," said their mother. "He'll be in honor bound to keep the secret then. Won't you, dear?"
"Jean did it," said Marjorie.
"Then suppose you confess," said Hal.
"It was this way," she explained after a pause of
