IN DAKOTA. 29 
more work than I had yet done since I came to the 
Territory. I had 180 acres of “old ground” all 
backset and in good condition for the spring crops. 
Encouraged by my success the last year, I concluded 
that by putting ninety acres of this in wheat and 
ninety in oats, and by raising crops on the sixty or 
seventy acres of breaking, which I expected to do 
during the season, I could safely count on crops that 
would realize from $3,500 to $4,000 gross, and leave 
me a net profit of about $2,500. There was nothing 
extravagant in this calculation. 
A TEMPTATION. 
One day a carpenter and builder from the village 
that was springing up on the new railroad line, three 
miles distant, came to see me. After talking over 
several other matters he suggested that I ought to 
have a better house, and that he was then in a situa- 
tion to build me one on very favorable terms, as he 
had more men over at the village than he had work 
for, and rather than keep them idle he would put 
them at work on a house for me at just about what 
he was paying them. ‘There was also a fine lot of 
lumber at the village which could be had very cheap, 
as the parties who had intended to use it in buiiding 
there had made other plans. 
The idea of a new and handsome house struck me 
in a weak point. To tell the truth I had for some 
time been a trifle ashamed of the little one story, 
12 x 20 frame in which we were living, and was 
