HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 21 



sas. There wasn't any reason in it; ordinary 

 human intelligence had nothing whatever to 

 do with it. We didn't know a blessed thing 

 about Arkansas ; indeed, we shared a very com- 

 mon prejudice against her. You know how 

 folks have always felt about Arkansas that 

 she's nothing but a dead spot on a live map. 

 If we had tried to reason it out, we shouldn't 

 have come to Fayetteville. But we didn't rea- 

 son. A few days before I'd happened to get 

 hold of a "farms-for-sale" list sent out by a 

 Fayetteville real estate man. We'd read thou- 

 sands of such circulars. There was nothing se- 

 ductive about this one; it was indifferently 

 written and badly printed, as if with an eye 

 single to cheapness. I'll never tell you why; 

 but on that list I'd checked a farm. There was 

 nothing alluring in the description: "120 

 acres 2^ mi. from town, part cleared, no im- 

 provements, $2400. Part Cash." The rest of 

 the circular let us know that Fayetteville was 

 in the heart of the Ozark mountain country, 

 and that here was the seat of the state univer- 

 sity. That's all we had to go by. 



It was the middle of a March night when we 

 got to Fayetteville and went to bed. We 

 waked in the morning in a blaze of crystal and 



