but now they were both working in the Yan-
kee Girl mine, and were doing well. I wrote
to them at that address, but my letter was
returned to me, "unclaimed." After that we
never heard from them.

Black Hawk, the new world in which we had
come to live, was a clean, well-planted little
prairie town, with white fences and good green
yards about the dwellings, wide, dusty streets,
and shapely little trees growing along the
wooden sidewalks. In the center of the town
there were two rows of new brick "store"
buildings, a brick schoolhouse, the court-
house, and four white churches. Our own
house looked down over the town, and from
our upstairs windows we could see the winding
line of the river bluffs, two miles south of us.
That river was to be my compensation for
the lost freedom of the farming country.

We came to Black Hawk in March, and by
the end of April we felt like town people.
Grandfather was a deacon in the new Baptist
Church, grandmother was busy with church
suppers and missionary societies, and I was
quite another boy, or thought I was. Sud-
denly put down among boys of my own age,
I found I had a great deal to learn. Before

[[165]]

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v?