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30 that kept her goin', but she's in debt an' would have been starved out by now, if it wasn't for the perfessors that come in here."

"Professors?"

"Yup." Lucius nodded and laughed. "They come up from th' college at Ann Arbor. Damn fools, all of 'em! Got a good eye for women, though!" He laughed and turned an obscene leer on his passenger. "Oh, she's got along; got to hand it to her—She's stuck on herself an' won't mix with common folks. Good reason, too. She don't want anybody to know what kind she is. Ha! Feller up here named Sim Burns—he's runnin' for supervisor in 'lection today—got stuck on her an' she wouldn't have him; so he tries to strong-arm her an' she run him off th' place with a wolf she's got. That kinda discouraged th' rest of th' boys, but we all know how she—"

He went on with his dirty gossip. They swung to the right, into a wide valley and came upon the first indication of life and progress in a half-dozen miles. Wire fences paralleled the road, winter wheat made a vivid splash in the drabness, windmills rose from the flat lands, the country was dotted with buildings and in the foreground rose a huge red barn, on its hipped roof, in great white letters, the legend:

"Headquarters; Harris Development Company."

"Here are farms," said Taylor, thinking of what the boy had said about the land. Lucius nodded and smiled knowingly. "Is this the same Harris?"

"Yup, an' this's his graft."

"Graft?"

"Sure. He got this land for nothin' an' is sellin' it for somethin'."