“Friends everywhere, eh, Glen,” said Ralph encouragingly.
“I’m so glad!” murmured his companion in a low grateful tone.
The young railroader calculated that he could visit the farm and get back to Stanley Junction by noon time. At the end of a three miles’ jerky run the train slowed down at a crossing and Ralph and Glen left it.
“There’s the place,” said the latter, as they reached the end of a grove, and he pointed to an old, low-built ruin of a house just ahead of them.
“They call it Desolation Patch around here. It’s in litigation somehow, and no one has lived in it until we came for several years, they tell me.”
“It does look rather ragged, for a fact,” said Ralph. “How did you come to pick it out, Glen?”
“Oh, it was just the place I was looking for. You see,” explained the boy in a slightly embarrassed way, “my grandfather is sort of--queer,” and Glen pointed soberly to his head.
“Yes, I understand,” nodded Ralph.
“I didn’t want to take him to a town where he might be noticed and mightn’t feel at home. Then there were reasons which--yes, some reasons.”
Ralph did not ask what they were. The farm embraced some twenty acres. Its improvements were mostly rickety, broken down barns and sheds. These seemed to be utilized in the chicken industry to the last foot of available space, the interested visitor noticed. An enclosure formed of sections of old wire netting held over a hundred of the feathery brood, and some of the boxes obtained from the wreck had been made into brooding pens.