Trudging along contentedly, he had covered some miles by noon, and then sat down to devour his luncheon. All that day he tramped, and the following one also, spending the night in the open; for it was beautiful weather, and frosts had long since departed from the land. Here and there he came upon settlements, and many a time was employment offered him, for the busy season with farmers was at hand, and labour always scarce. Sometimes he passed isolated farms, and on the third night put up in the shack of a settler who had little cause to complain of his progress.
"Came out as a youngster," he told Joe. "Took jobs here and there for four years, and then applied for a quarter section. It happened to be free from trees, though there was many an old rotting stump in the ground. I ploughed a quarter of the acreage the first year and secured a fine crop. Next year I did better, and broke up still more ground. If things go along nicely I shall do well, while already the section is worth some hundreds of dollars. Am I lonely? Don't you think it! I've too much doing in summertime and sufficient in winter. The chaps as is lonely are those who've lived in towns all their lives, and are used to people buzzing about them, and to trains and trams. They want to go to a theatre or a picture entertainment most every night, and having none about find things lonesome. I don't. If I want company I get the rig and drive off to a neighbour, or use the sleigh if the snow's too deep. Then there's a moose hunt at times, while always there's work to be done—tending the cattle, feeding the pigs and poultry, sawing logs, and suchlike. In summer there's picnics with the neighbours—shooting and fishing too at times. No, I ain't lonely."
Joe left his hospitable roof and pressed on towards the north-west, with his back to the railway. And a little later he came upon a small settlement, with farms immediately adjacent. Here he had no difficulty in obtaining work as a farm hand, the payment to be ten dollars a month and his board and keep.
"Know anything?" asked his employer, a man of some forty years of age, a colonial born, to whom Joe soon took a liking.
"Know anything about farming?" repeated Peter Strike, the man in question.
"Nothing," was Joe's answer, with an accompanying shake of the head.
"Never farmed, eh?"
"Never; couldn't milk a cow."
"Yer don't say so," grinned the farmer. "Now you'll do, you will, fine."
Joe was at a loss to understand. It seemed somewhat curious to him to hear that a hand engaged on a farm would do well when it was known that he was utterly ignorant. He explained the difficulty.