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 "You look jes like a Tom turkey with its head a-swellin' up with blood," she teased. "Why does a man allus like to feel hisself big an' important an' better'n every other man? You 'member Uncle Tom Pooler at the party. 'I'm a baar in the woods, I am. Yaas, sir, I'm a baar in the woods! She imitated his whiskey-fuddled mutterings.

"An' you men hain't the on'y ones," she went on. "All male critters is the same. Look haow proud a Tom turkey struts, an' haow a big rooster cranes his neck an' crows an' chases the smaller roosters out o' the yard. An' look haow two big, bellerin' bulls'll fight jes fer the love o' fightin'. Wimmin hain't like that, allus makin' the most o' theirselves. They tend their own business and let other wimmin tend theirs."

"The hell they do so," countered Jerry. "Aunt Sally Whitmarsh was into our place las' night, an' I jes wish you cud a heard her. I was in the little room off the kitchen a-shavin' an' the door was open atween. An' if Aunt Sally wa'n't a-spittin' out pizen about the neighbors acrost the kitchen stove to mammy, then I don't know a dirty tongue when I hear it. The ugly thing about wimmin is they never say a thing right out an' have done with it, like a man does. They jes set with their hands in their laps an' say a little bit an' leave the rest to the other woman's dirty 'magination. An' my own mammy herse'f hain't much better'n the rest. I don't like wimmin, Judy. There's sumpin' small an' mean an' underhand an' foul about most all of 'em. Uncle Jabez was purty nigh right when he told me they was all harlots. You're the on'y woman I know that's got a man's ways, Judy. You hain't spiled."

The year passed quickly for them both in their delirium of early love. Accident was kind to them and did not thrust upon them with untimely speed the physical results of the sweet intimacy that they enjoyed. So they did not have to hasten their marriage, and the neighbors were deprived of a juicy bit of scandal. In February Jerry procured a license; and one day late in the month they drove over to Clayton

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 and, through the medium of Obe Applestill, local Justice of the Peace, they secured the blessing of the law on their relations. After that Jerry did not rest easy until they were in a home of their own.

In early February Jerry signed a contract with old Hiram Stone.

The house that he was to have was a little two-room frame shanty in a deep hollow between two hills and about half a mile from the main road. The five acres of tobacco ground and the ten acres of corn land that were to be in Jerry's charge for the year, lay close at hand. The little cabin was more attractive than most of the tenant houses in Scott County, bare, sheds, most of them standing starkly on barren hillsides or marshy stretches, as though the hand of some careless giant had scattered them with no thought whatever of the use that they were to serve. Jerry had picked the house from three because he wanted to bring his bride to something that looked like a home. Two tall hickory trees rose high into the air and intertwined their branches above the little house. It nestled comfortably under the hill. The low roof projected over the eaves and gave it a snug, homelike look. Inside it had a fireplace, though a small and crude one. Some former tenant had planted a lilac bush by the door; and a grape vine clambered over a rude trellis at one end. A little brook trickled through the hollow a few rods away and made pleasant murmurings.

Jerry had "worked out" during most of the year and had assiduously saved money. Judith too had worked again at Aunt Eppie's for several months and with her savings had bought bedding, towels, a dress or two and a few pieces of coarse muslin underwear gaily strung with crass pink ribbons. Jerry's mother had contributed two new patchwork quilts. Luella had made her a nice warm comforter tied with red wool. And Aunt Abigail, much to Judith's surprise, had come forward with one of her best Log Cabin quilts.

"This here quilt," she said, unfolding it impressively, "was patched by me when I was a little gal on'y fourteen year old.

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 Gals don't patch quilts naow like they did when I was young. I've allus took good care of it, an' I want you to do the same, Judy. When you have a pack o' young uns of yer own, don't let 'em ramp an' tear all over it. Nothin' ruins a quilt quicker'n young uns a-pitchin' an' a-scramblin' a-top of it. If they've got to pitch an' scramble, let 'em do it on the grass or on the floor an' not a-top o' this here good quilt."

"Naow, Judy, we don't want to buy no new furniture," Jerry had said, when they were planning for their home. "New furniture costs too much. You can't git a new cook stove under about twenty-five dollars. An' at a sale you kin pick up one jes as good fer about eight or ten. Same with tables an' beds an' dressers. You kin git all sech plunder fer nex' to nothin' at sales. Fust sale there is anywhere within ten miles we'll go."

A short time after this a sale was advertised. Uncle Nat Carberry, who lived over near Dry Ridge, had died at the age of eighty-three, leaving his farm, stock, and personal possessions to be divided among his eight children. Everybody for miles around knew about the sale and nearly everybody was going whether they wanted to buy anything or not.

When Jerry and Judith got to the scene of the sale there were already many buggies and wagons hitched to the fence. One lonely automobile, a Ford, belonged to Pete Whitmarsh who was overseer for Hiram Stone. It was quite generally whispered of Pete that he managed to get away with a good deal more than his wages.

It was a mild, springlike day in late February, with the young grass already showing green in damp sheltered spots. The men were in the barnyard. The women and children were mostly clustered about the door, going in and out of the house, looking at the things set out for sale, peering into this and prodding at that with discreet curiosity. When they got tired of doing this, they sat down stiffly on the chairs that were for sale and stared straight ahead of them. They were dressed primly in their best clothes, with clean aprons and smoothly combed hair.

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 The house, a very old one, was much fallen into decay. Since his wife's death some twenty-odd years before, Uncle Nat Carberry had lived in it quite alone. The repairs that he had made during that time had been of a makeshift character.

"It'll last fer as long as I'm a-goin to need it," he had been in the habit of saying for the last twenty years, whenever he pasted paper over a broken window pane or stuffed rags into a chink in the wall where the mud had fallen away. Now at last he needed it no more.

The household goods had been moved out into the yard. The heirs, the old man's eight children, were keeping a watchful eye on them to see that nobody stole any of the smaller articles. A walnut dropleaf table covered with a square of hideous yellow oilcloth worn through at the corners, was spread with coarse white earthenware dishes, a few pieces of old blue willow ware, an eight-day clock, a handful of wooden-handled steel knives and forks, a few bits of cheap glassware, two small glass lamps and a pair of beautiful brass candlesticks. Near by stood an old horsehair-covered walnut couch with broken springs and stuffing sticking out through many holes in the horsehair; a mahogany chest of drawers, solid and massive, but much scarred and with most of the drawer knobs gone, a walnut bedstead and a few chairs.

On a battered kitchen table was massed a collection of smoked-up pots and pans, bowls, skillets, strainers, and the like. Underneath stood kegs, buckets, crocks of various sizes, stone jugs, and other cellar accumulations. Several dozen balls of carpet rags that had been sewn by Uncle Nat's wife before she died and had lain in the bottom of an old chest ever since, were piled in a clothes basket.

Jerry and Judith strolled about among the things looking them over. They came to an old rocking chair of hard maple. The back, high and comfortably curved, was of woven cane. The original cane seat had long since given out and been replaced by narrow strips of horsehide neatly interwoven in basket fashion. The curved arms were worn paintless and smooth and polished by the laying on of many shirt sleeves.

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 "That's a good lookin' chair," said Judith, regarding it. "An' I bet it sets comfortable."

"But don't let's buy it, Judy," whispered Jerry. "They say Uncle Nat died in it."

"Why, Jerry Blackford, don't be silly. What odds if he died in it or not?" she scoffed. "Hain't people allus a-dyin' in beds? An' folks keeps on a-sleepin' in 'em, don't they? It's a nice chair, an' I'm a-goin' to try to hev it."

All at once the auctioneer was heard calling: "Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, all ye good people." Obe was proud of his legal language. He mounted upon a box beside the kitchen door. "Naow ladies an' genlums, the terms of this here sale is as follers: Everything under five dollars, cash. All over five dollars, note payable in six months at six per cent interest, said note to be endorsed by a responsible party ownin' property an' acceptable to the executors of Uncle Nat Carberry's will. Uncle Nat Carberry is gone to his long rest, an' we're here this afternoon fer to sell his goods. Naow what'll ye gimme fer this here skillet? It's a good, old fashioned steel skillet—no flimsy sheet iron stuff—an' it'll fry yer pancakes the way ye like 'em fried, nice an' braown on the outside an' done clear all the way through. What, nobody won't gimme a bid on this here skillet? All right, we hain't got no time to waste a-foolin' over this small stuff. It's gotta go quick. Hand me that there iron stew pan. Naow here's yer stew pan all ready to make the mush an' milk fer breakfast or bile the taters fer dinner. Who'll gimme a bid on the two of 'em?"

"Ten cents."

"All right, take 'em away. Ten cents; an' Jerry Blackford is the buyer. Goin' to housekeepin', Jerry?"

Jerry blushed furiously and set the skillet and pot back in a corner beside the fence.

The auctioneer was Obe Applestill, local Justice of the Peace, who had lately performed the marriage ceremony for Jerry and Judith. Obe was a general utility character of a sort that is to be found in most rural communities, one of those legal hangers-on that one finds in very small towns. He functioned

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 as Justice of the Peace, Notary Public, insurance agent, tax assessor, real estate broker, auctioneer, and in a number of other allied activities. He was a little man with a jolly round face, keen bright blue eyes and a mouth shrunken from missing teeth, which he was always wetting with his tongue. Every few minutes this small red tongue would dart forth adder-like, make a quick circle around his lips and then retreat again behind the snags and withered gums of his mouth. He wore a pepper and salt suit whose creases were of the body rather than of the pressing iron; and his hair, which had not been cut for some time, was beginning to follow the curve of his ears. He was something of a wag, was fond of a joke and a drop of whiskey, and knew everybody within ten miles of Clayton.

"Naow, gimme a bid on this here pair o' brass candlesticks like granmammy used to light the haouse with. Nobody don't hardly use a grease lamp like this no more; but they're mighty handy to pick up to go to bed with. You don't have to bother with no lamp chimney. Who'll gimme ten cents for 'em?"

He waited for a few seconds with the candlesticks in his hand.

"What, hain't this pair o' candlesticks wo'th ten cents to nobody. All right, hand me some o' them plates to go with 'em."

One of the eight children, a middle aged woman with pinched features, handed up a couple of coarse white plates.

"My, it looks like everything's a-goin' to go awful cheap!" she sighed dolorously.

Obe rattled on until he had sold all the household goods. They sold for almost nothing, as such things always did. The heirs looked on in dismay. Glad to be rid of this "wimmin's plunder," Obe led the way to the barn where the stock, tools and implements were waiting for him. Most of the women did not follow to the barn but remained sitting or standing stolidly about the house, waiting for their menfolks to come back.

The men who swarmed after Obe to the barn looked like a throng of animated scarecrows. Unlike the women, they had

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 not dressed for the occasion; but had come in the clothes in which they had been following the plow or hauling out manure onto the tobacco ground. Their ancient garments, mostly bleached to a common drabness by exposure to rain and sun, were torn and patched in the most unexpected places. Long, straggly hair hung about the filthy necks and ears and over the frayed collars. There were gaunt, gawky bodies, small, shriveled, distorted bodies, bent shoulders, slouching legs, and shambling feet. The faces, most of them with weirdly assorted features, were skinny, pinched, and bleary-eyed. Only a few of the young men were straight and ruddy and shone out healthy and wholesome from their dingy clothes.

At the barn were several sets of harness in different stages of decay, hoes, rakes, pitchforks, tobacco knives, a few tools, and a great pile of scrap iron, which latter Obe bought himself because in addition to his other activities he handled junk. There was also an old buggy, a sled, two wagons, and a plow.

The men strolled about among these things looking them over critically, shaking wagon wheels to determine the play, examining the prongs of pitchforks, and straining bits of the harness to see how rotten the leather was.

Obe soon got rid of this accumulation and led the way around to the hogpen where there was a black sow ready to farrow and another black sow with eleven little pigs squealing about her. The men crowded about the hogpen. The livestock always excited their special interest and brought the liveliest bidding.

"Naow then, who'll gimme a bid on this here black sow ready to farrow? She's a-goin' to have pigs any day naow; an' every one o' them little pigs'll be ripe fer butcherin' agin nex' Thanksgivin' Day comes raound. They'll git along nice through the summer on scraps an' weeds an' dishwater; an' agin fall comes you'll have yer corn to fatten 'em. They won't cost ye much to keep. Gimme a bid."

"Five dollars."

"Five dollars! Why, any one of her shoats'll be wo'th five

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 dollars afore long. Somebody gimme a real bid on this here hawg."

At last the bidders reached nine dollars.

"Nine I'm bid. Naow gimme nine-fifty."

Uncle Sam Whitmarsh, who had been bidding on the hog against Tom Pooler, turned away and spat disgustedly into the straw.

"No, by Gawd, I don't pay no nine dollars fer no brood sow. I'm done."

Obe glimpsed him with his watchful little eyes and knew that the top figure had been reached.

"Nine-fifty, nine-fifty, nine-fifty. Hain't nobody willin' to bid nine-fifty on this fine brood sow all ready to farrow? Is she a-goin' to be give away at nine dollars? You all through? You all done? Watch aout! Daown she goes, an' sold at nine dollars to Tom Pooler. You've got a mighty good hawg there, Tom; an' you got 'er dirt cheap."

After the other sow had been sold the two cows were driven out of the barn and the men formed a circle around them. They came out sniffing the air and looking all around with startled eyes, frightened by the solid human fence that hemmed them in on all sides. One was a big, angular brindle cow with a great sagging udder showing signs of advanced age. Nobody wanted an old cow nor a thin cow; so she sold for only twenty-three dollars.

The other was a young Jersey heifer with her first calf at her heels, both of them slim, deer-like little creatures with large, liquid eyes. This cow was the subject of some lively bidding.

"What am I bid fer this here purty young heifer with her first calf by her side?" Obe started out.

The bidders ran the cow up to seventy-five dollars. Here the bidding lagged. Uncle Amos Hatfield, Sam Whitmarsh, and Ezra Pettit were bidding.

"Seventy-five," called out two of the bidders almost in one breath.

"Seventy-five. I'm bid seventy-five. She's a-goin', she's

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 a-goin', she's a-goin'. You all through? You all done? Sold to Amos Hatfield for seventy-five dollars."

"Hey," called out old man Pettit in an aggrieved tone. "I jes done gone bid seventy-five on that air caow. What's the reason Amos Hatfield gits 'er?"

"Sorry, Uncle Ezra; I didn't hear yer bid. Did anybody else hear Uncle Ezra bid seventy-five on the caow?"

There was no response.

"Ye'll have to learn to talk laouder, Ezra."

Obe smiled wickedly. The crowd snickered. Ezra turned away muttering disgustedly. Obe was occasionally suspected of playing favorites in this way and sometimes aroused considerable bad feeling. But when the joke was on Uncle Ezra everybody sided with the auctioneer and the other fellow.

The door into the horse stall was now thrown open and the horses came out. One of the old man's grandsons, a handsome, dark-eyed boy in a ragged red sweater, rode one and led the other. The men formed a wider circle to give the animals room to show themselves. There was no male inhabitant of Scott County who did not consider himself an expert judge of horses. Around the circle of onlookers went an increased buzz of talk, a craning of unshaven necks, a fastening of critical eyes on the horses and a great deal of emphatic spitting.

"Naow then," bellowed Obe, girding himself for the grand finale of the sale. "I'm a-goin' to sell ye the best team o' work hosses this side o' Cynthiana. They're five an' six year old, not a day more. Uncle Nat Carberry raised 'em hisse'f from foals an' he raised 'em careful. Nobody in Scott County knew better haow to raise an' break a colt than Uncle Nat. There hain't spot ner blemish on nary one of 'em. If anybody here'll point me spot or blemish on ary one o' them hosses, I'll hand him a ten dollar bill out o' my own pocket."

Obe reached down in his hip pocket, brought out a small roll of bills, flourished them for a moment or two and put them back. In the meantime the horses, ridden and led by the boy in the ragged red sweater, had been trotting around and around the enlarged ring. They were gray horses of the Percheron

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 breed, strong, stockily-built animals with broad backs, heavy haunches, and gentle, if rather dull faces.

Obe's face glowed with genuine pride and enthusiasm as he waited for the bid.

"Hundred an' fifty."

He ran the horses up to two hundred and eleven dollars. There for some time they hung. Judith and Jerry, leaning over a bit of rail fence side by side, were flushed with excitement. Their healthy young faces shone out vividly by contrast with the faded scarecrows about them. Jerry was bidding on the horses.

"You'd best get 'em, Jerry, they're good uns," Judith whispered excitedly in his ear. "Don't let Edd Whitmarsh git away with 'em."

"Two hundred an' twelve. I'm bid two hundred an' twelve. Naow gimme thirteen, gimme thirteen, gimme thirteen. You don't wanta be unlucky? Waal gimme fourteen then, gimme fourteen, gimme fourteen, gimme fourteen."

His practised eye saw that the bidding was over.

"Air these fine hosses a-goin' to sell fer two hundred an' twelve dollars? Don't nobody want a extry good work team? Two hundred an' twelve I'm bid. Uncle Nat'd turn in his grave if he cud see me a-sellin' his good team fer two hundred an' twelve dollars. You all through? You all done. Watch out! Daown she goes an' sold to Jerry Blackford fer two hundred an' twelve dollars. Jerry, if you live to be a hundred you won't never own a better work team nor what you got right naow. Take good care of 'em, Jerry, an' they'll treat you good."

The sale was over. Obe, flushed with his exertions and the few drinks of whiskey that had been handed to him, took out his big red handkerchief and wiped his face. The crowd began to disperse.

When Jerry and Judith came to load their wagon they found that they had almost equipped themselves for housekeeping. They had bought the mahogany chest of drawers for a dollar and a half, and the walnut bedstead for a dollar, four rush-bot-

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 tomed chairs for twenty cents each and the old cane-backed rocking chair for fifty cents. Judith had secured some of the blue dishes, not because she knew them to be of any value, but because they looked and felt nicer than the coarse white ware. In addition to these, they had an assortment of pots and pans, stone jars, kegs and the like.

Together they loaded their new possessions onto the wagon. Jerry tied his horses behind, and they rattled away toward home. The boy and girl were excited and jubilant over these treasures passed on to them from the ancient dead. All the way back they chattered together, planning for their new home. It was one of those mild clear February evenings that show already the lengthening of the days and give a subtle promise of spring. Bare trees and barns and little houses, standing out against the pure sky, made an ever-changing series of silhouette pictures for them as they drove along. Before they reached home the sun had set, and the evening star beside a slim new moon was silver in the deepening blue. Sheep bells tinkled across the darkening fields, the smoke of supper fires rose up into the still air; and out of the sky a great peace seemed to descend and brood over the earth and the affairs of men.

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into the new home was an exciting adventure for Jerry and Judith. Neither of them was much past the playhouse age, and this first home settling was like the realization of their childhood longing to have a great big playhouse with things in it that really worked. Together they set up the newly-polished cookstove, which they had bought for eleven dollars at a later sale. Jerry put up shelves and drove in rows of nails, while Judith arranged the blue dishes and the shiny tin saucepans. Jerry, who was a good amateur carpenter, made a big bench for the washtubs and a baby bench to hold the wash basin and soap saucer. It was unusually warm for March, warm enough to have the door open. Judith polished the cobwebby little windows so that more sunlight could come in, and it fell in golden squares through the clean panes and in a slanting oblong through the open door. As Jerry worked on the benches just outside the door and Judith bustled about inside, they were continually thinking of important things to say to each other and rushing to the door to say them. The bright new shavings from Jerry's plane caught the sunlight and gave out a clean, fresh smell. Grass was springing up green through the dried growth of last year. Every few moments the trill of a meadow lark fell like a rain of bright bubbles through the sunny air. Robins were flitting about prospecting for a good place to build; and crows in the distance cawed their joy at the return of warmth and food.

The ancient chest of drawers was refurbished. Jerry had screwed empty spools into the places where the drawer knobs used to be and covered the whole with a coat of brown varnish paint that made it shine again. In the big drawers Judith folded away their clothes and spread one of the new red-bordered towels over the top. On the walnut dropleaf table she

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 laid a square of glossy new oilcloth. She made up the bed with the new sheets and the bright patchwork quilts. The old rocking chair in which Uncle Nat had died was gay with a bright chintz cushion. Thus the old man's possessions, already hoary with experience, took on a new outside gloss and began a new life, like an elderly widower who marries a young wife and for a little while shakes off the accumulations of the years and almost fancies himself young again. Drinking coffee from chipped and cracked blue cups a century old, Judith and Jerry laughed and chattered with no thought that those who had first drunk from these cups, perhaps as young and gay as themselves, were long since turned to dust in some neglected graveyard.

It was astonishing how much they could laugh. They laughed when the sizzling hog meat spat hot grease into their faces. They laughed when Jerry leaned too heavily on the table leaf and almost overturned it. They laughed when they saw flies buzzing in the sunny window pane, a sure sign of warm weather. They laughed when the new butcher knife fell on the floor and stuck daggerwise into the soft pine board. And when there was nothing whatever to laugh at, they laughed at nothing whatever, because laugh they must.

The first sleep in Uncle Nat Carberry's walnut bed was disturbed by no ghost dreams of the tragedies, comedies, and tragi-comedies that had been witnessed by that ancient piece of furniture. If old beds and chairs, like old houses, are haunted, it is to the lonely and the disillusioned that they reveal themselves. Before young lovers they stand abashed and hug their secrets to their bosoms. The old bed received them in its arms as though they were its first pair of lovers. And when at last they fell asleep under the gay patchwork quilts, they slept as soundly as two children until the early March dawn brought them their first waking together—supreme of moments!

But life could not be all play for Jerry and Judith, nor did they in the least expect it to be so. Work had never as yet showed its ugly side to them, hence they had no dread of it.

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 They were accustomed to work and expected to do so all their lives as a matter of course. How else could they use up all the abundant strength and energy that surged each day as from an inexhaustible wellspring into their young bodies? So on the third morning Jerry harnessed up his new team and went forth whistling to plow the land that was to be put into corn. Judith watched him disappear over the brow of the ridge, then went back into the house and washed up the dishes and set the rooms to rights. Having done this she went out again into the sunny dooryard.

She had always disliked the insides of houses. The gloom of little-windowed rooms, the dead chill or the heavy heat as the fire smouldered or blazed, the prim, set look of tables and cupboards that stood always in the same places engaged in the never ending occupation of collecting dust both above and beneath: these things stifled and depressed her. She was always glad to escape into the open where there was light, life, and motion and the sun and the wind kept things clean. So, having done up her morning chores, she went out into the yard and busied herself with building chicken coops out of packing boxes. She worked away happily, unmindful of the passing of time, until she was startled to hear the rattle of harness and Jerry's voice calling "Whoa," to the horses.

"My land, if I hain't clear fergot to put on a single bite o' dinner," she gasped, as she raced into the house and stuffed kindlings into the cold cookstove.

When Jerry came in after unharnessing and feeding the horses, she was frantically beating up cornmeal batter, and the sliced meat was sizzling in the frying pan.

"Didn't I tell you I was no good of a housekeeper," she laughed, as Jerry caught her in his arms and kissed her. "I was a-buildin' chicken coops, an' I done gone clean fergot all about dinner till I heard the harness a-rattlin'. An' I was a-goin' to make you a biled puddin' to-day an' cook some o' that cabbage Aunt Eppie give us. The Pettits has got so much cabbage left over this year they're a-feedin' it to the hawgs. Naow we can't have nothin' but hog meat an' cakes."

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 "Hog meat an' cakes is plenty good enough fer me," opined Jerry. "If you cook 'em they'll taste to me better'n biled puddin' and cabbage cooked by the Queen o' Sheba. Anyhow we'd otta be glad dad turned loose o' the hogbellies. Most folks eats an' coffee three times a day this time o' year."

The strong salt pork and fried corn cakes, washed down by something that Peter Akers sold as coffee, a concoction at once rank and insipid, tasted delicious to their healthy young appetites. Laughs between the bites of corn cake, ecstatic giggles mingled with the salt pork and kisses that spilled the coffee from the cups, glorified their little meal into a feast royal. When it was over, Jerry went back to his plowing; and Judith, having washed up the dishes, put on her sunbonnet and jacket and walked over to see Lizzie May.

Lizzie May had been married to Dan Pooler for over a year. They lived about two miles away on the Dixie Pike in one of Uncle Ezra Pettit's tenant houses. It was a gaunt, two-story box standing bleakly on the top of a hill. Not a tree stood anywhere near and it looked as lonely as a water tank at a desert railway station. Its four weather-grayed sides were turned sullenly to the four winds.

Lizzie May was sitting by the stove sewing carpet rags. Her cotton dress was fastened at the throat with a little brooch of washed gold and imitation jewels, a present from Dan before their marriage; and she was wearing one of the fancy little frilled aprons that she loved to make. She was several months advanced in pregnancy and was not looking well. Her pale, small-featured face showed lines of endurance, and already a look of age was pinching the youthful curves.

"Why, Lizzie May, you don't look a bit pert. What's the matter?" inquired Judith, as she flung her hat and jacket into a chair and sat down opposite her sister. The younger girl's presence seemed to shed a warmth and radiance about the prim little room that enfolded and enhanced everything except her sister sitting coldly opposite her.

"Oh, I dunno. I s'pose it's my condition," answered Lizzie May languidly and a little importantly. "My stomach don't

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 bother me no more; but my back feels weak most all the time and pains me a good deal some days." She launched into a detailed description of her symptoms which Judith, who had scarcely had a pain in her life, could not follow with much sympathy or understanding.

"You need to git out more, Lizzie May," she rallied, "and not hang in the house so much. I'd feel sick too if I stayed around this kitchen as much as you do. You don't hardly never go to dad's any more, an' I s'pose you won't come to see me naow I'm gone to housekeepin'. I'm sure I don't see what keeps you inside here all the time. You hain't got much to do. 'Tain't like as if you had milk to handle an' turkeys to chase."

"Mebbe you don't think I got much to do, but I do," answered Lizzie May, bridling. "You wait till you been a-keepin' haouse yo'se'f fer a spell. Agin I scrub this floor every second day an' polish the stove twict a week an' sweep an' dust an' wash an' iron an' bake bread an' cook the meals an' scour the black off the pans, I don't git much time to go a-gallivantin'."

"But you don't need to scrub the floor an' polish the stove so often. The way you keep 'em shined, anybody'd think you et off of 'em 'stead of off the table. You know what you make me think of, Lizzie May? You act jes like if a little tame rabbit would shet itself in its cage an' never came aout an' then spend all its time a-workin' hard to keep its cage clean."

Lizzie May pursed her prim little mouth with a superior air.

Taint no use fer you an' me to argy over sech things, Judy," she said haughtily. "We got dif'rent notions about haow a house otta be kep'. Fer me, I like to see things nice an' I'm allus a-goin' to try to keep 'em nice. I like to do housework; an' even though I don't allus feel well, the work wouldn't bother me a bit, if I didn't have other troubles."

She sighed heavily.

"What other troubles have you got?" asked Judith incredulously.

"Oh, I have lots of other troubles. You'll have 'em too, naow your married. For one thing, Dan goes off fox huntin'

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 nights an' nights an' leaves me here alone, an' I git that skairt. You wouldn't believe all the noises there is when anybody's alone at night. Night afore las' I was sure I heard somebody a-walkin' raound an' raound the house. I was in bed, an' I pulled the quilts up over my head an' tried to fergit it; but I kep' on a-hearin' it. At las' I couldn't stand it no longer, an' I got up an' looked out the winder; an' it was only Uncle Jonah Cobb's ole mare Betsy that had broke through the fence an' was a-wanderin' raound an' raound the house a-eatin' grass. But it give me a awful scare jes the same. Things like that makes a person nervous."

"Nonsense, Lizzie May! You born an' raised here to be askairt to stay alone in the house nights! Why, who's ever been bothered in their house that you ever heard on?"

Lizzie May had to admit that she had never heard of any of the neighbors being attacked at night in their homes; but nevertheless she was afraid.

"Them dawgs too," she went on. "He's baound to keep 'em all. You know how I've allus hated a haound. The meal they eat is enough to fatten a hawg. An' of course it's me that has to cook it fer 'em. An' another thing, when he goes fox huntin' I never know if he's a-goin' to come home drunk or sober. Whenever he gits with Edd Whitmarsh, the two of 'em jes drinks theirselves as full as ticks. An' we can't spare the money neither. If I spent the same money on clothes for myse'f or the baby that's cornin' he'd be the first to say it was a awful extravagance. I wonder why men allus has to drink? Us wimmin git along without it. An' no matter if there hain't money in the house to buy a sack o' flour, they kin allus find some to spend on whiskey. One night las' week Dan come in so drunk he jes laid hisse'f daown on the mat beside the bed with all his clothes on an' declared up an' daown he was in bed. An' I had to take off his shoes an' his clothes an' pull an 'yank an' pretty nigh kick him afore I could git him to crawl up into bed. I tell you I was that disgusted. If I'd a thought married life was a-goin' to be anything like this, I don't think I'd a been

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 in such a hurry to git married. There's times when I wish I was back home with dad agin. It wa'n't like that in the books we used to read. You 'member them books?"

Lizzie May named several novels by such purveyors of roseate fiction as Bertha M. Clay, Mary Jane Holmes and Laura Jean Libbey, which in ragged paper covers had found their way into the Pippinger home.

"Yes, but in them books it allus ends when they git married," Judith reminded her. "They never tell what happens after. All they say is that they lived happy ever after."

"Yes, an' they're allus about rich people," chimed in Lizzie May. "I did used to love to read them books an' fancy I lived like that. I guess rich husbands is dif'rent. It must be awful nice to be rich."

She sighed and her blue eyes looked wistfully out of the window, where white clouds could be seen chased by the March wind across a bright blue sky.

The shriek of a whistle pierced the air, and a train half a mile away roared along the track on its way to Lexington. Through the little window the smoke from the engine could be seen in a white, moving column.

"Wouldn't it be nice if we was all rich an' ridin' away through the country on that big train!" she sighed. "When you're poor an' stuck allus in the same place, life gits to seem so dull."

In Lizzie May's imagination only the rich and happy rode on trains. She figured riding in a train as a sumptuous and palatial progress toward some idyllic pleasure goal. The reality of smoke, cinders, stale air, germ-infested plush, and filthy floor, tired women and dirty children, staid spinsters, and sleek commercial travelers with fat necks, dingy people hastening anxiously to deathbeds or drearily to new jobs: all this was happily unknown to her. Her eyes followed the white moving column of smoke hungrily, wistfully.

"Yes, it must be awful nice to be rich," she sighed again, as the column of smoke disappeared.

"Yes, I s'pose it is nice to be rich," rejoined Judith, with

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 just a momentary far-away look in her eyes. "But somehow it don't bother me much that I hain't rich. I have lots o' fun a-doin' and a-makin' things. All this mornin' I built chicken coops. I got six dandies. No rat'll git my chicks this spring. An' I'm a-goin' to buy three settin's o' turkey eggs from Aunt Maggie Slatten an' set 'em under hens. If they're raised by a old hen they don't wander off so far when they're growed an' git ketched an' stole. An' nex' winter when I have to set in the house an' the evenin's is long, I'm a-goin' to sew me rags fer a carpet too. I've begun savin' 'em. Them's awful nice rags you got there. Haow did you manage to git 'em all sech nice colors?"

Lizzie May's face brightened and the wistful look disappeared.

"Yes, if I do say it, I got nice rags. I cut 'em jes as fine an' even as I can; an' then I tie 'em in bunches an' dye 'em the color I want. These yaller ones is dyed with cream o' tarter an' potash, like Aunt Abigail showed me haow to do. An' the blue ones I done with real strong blueing water. For the other colors I bought the dye. You kin dye a whole lot o' pink with one package o' red dye. I'm a-goin' to have Aunt Selina weave the carpet stripèd: yaller, blue, pink, green, an' red; yaller, blue, pink, green, an' red. All along like that. It'll be nice an' bright an' cheerful. I want to try to have my front room real nice. Dan's Aunt Carrie give me a pair of lovely lace curtains fer the winder; an' I got three cushion covers patched. One of 'em is all silk, with flowers embroidered on nearly every piece. Lemme show it to you."

She ran into the other room, brought forth the "crazy" monstrosity and spread it with pride before Judith's admiring eyes. The joy of achievement, the rich glow of the creator gloating over his creation, filled her with warm radiance.

"My it is nice," exclaimed Judith, reverently feeling the smoothness of the silk and satin pieces with the tips of her fingers. "I'm a-goin' to make me one when I git enough silk pieces saved—if I ever do."

Encouraged by this admiration, Lizzie May brought out the

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 other pillow tops together with the coarse imitation lace curtains, and spread them gleefully before her sister. She was a child again in the delighted ownership of these "pretty things." Judith, too, was filled with childish envy and emulation. Together they exclaimed and rhapsodied over the colors, the embroidered flowers and the fine herringbone stitching done by Lizzie May's painstaking little hand.

"They're awful nice to have," said Judith, with an intake of the breath. "But somehow I've never had much patience to make sech things. I've allus liked better to draw pitchers of hosses an' dawgs an 'mulesan' mules [sic] an' folks that looks like 'em. I do love to draw sech things yet. But of course they hain't pretty. Mebbe now I'm married I'll take more interest in sewin' an' makin' nice things for the house."

"Of course you will, Judy," encouraged Lizzie May, with more than a touch of patronage.

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to Lizzie May's predictions and somewhat to her disappointment, Judith failed to suffer from the marital troubles that increasingly vexed her own life. Jerry proved to be, at least according to Lizzie May's standards, a much better husband than Dan. He did not care for the sport of fox hunting, so there were no hounds to bay around the house at night and greedily lick of the corn meal that could ill be spared. He never went anywhere in the evenings, and he had not been drunk a dozen times in his life. Lizzie May had to admit to herself that Judy, the wild and harum-scarum, who was capable of almost any foolishness, had made a much more sensible choice than she. But of course it was nothing but luck, she told herself. She felt in a vague, half acknowledged way that she had a quite justifiable complaint to make against the powers that be because chance had favored the irresponsible instead of meting out just reward to the careful and prudent. This did not mean that she would have been willing to exchange Dan for Jerry. She would have scorned such an opportunity. Dan was Dan. He was the man who had courted her. He was hers. But she would have liked to borrow some of Jerry's qualities and insert them craftily into Dan's character, making him over into a husband more contributory to her comfort and convenience.

All that summer, in spite of the toil of the field, Judith was joyous and radiant. And she worked hard. She could not take the matter of earning a living as seriously as did Jerry; but she caught some of the infection of his ambition to raise big crops and lay by money for a home of their own. So she worked in the corn and tobacco as determinedly as he, stopping only to cook their simple meals and wash up the few dishes, with an occasional day off for washing clothes. Besides helping Jerry in the field, she looked after her chickens and turkeys

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 and made a kitchen garden near the house in which she raised beets, cabbages, beans, tomatoes, and other vegetables to take away the curse of bareness from their table.

The first big job of the season came in May. This was the tobacco setting. Late in February Jerry had made the tobacco bed. It was nine feet by sixty feet and it lay in a sheltered hollow sloping gently to the south. To kill the weed seeds Jerry had burnt the bed by covering it with old fence rails and setting them on fire. Then he had raked the ashes into the ground and made the earth as fine and smooth as sand. Into this he had sowed the small, almost microscopic seed, had tramped it well into the ground and spread over the whole a tightly stretched covering of cheesecloth to protect the young plants from wind and frost. According to the custom of tenant farmers' wives in the tobacco country, Judith had planted on the edges seed of tomatoes, peppers, and cabbages to make plants for the home garden.

It was a dry spring that year, and Jerry had had to work hard to keep the plants alive. Again and again, after his day's work was done, he had trudged to and fro between the nearest spring and the tobacco bed carrying big buckets of water to the thirsty young plants. Jerry found to his dismay that it took a great many buckets of water to wet a nine by sixty bed. At last in late April there came several days of gently falling warm rain and the plants took on new life. By the middle of May they were lush and lusty and ready to be set when the right weather conditions arrived.

The big rain came the last week in May, bringing the much desired "season." Little showers had fallen from time to time, but they were not enough to wet the ground deeply. Jerry was beginning to grow uneasy and had been scanning the weather signs with an anxious eye for many days. On the evening of the twenty-fifth, as he drove his horses up from the field where he had been cultivating corn, the sun sank behind an opaque wall of sickly yellow cloud. Looking about Jerry saw the sky overcast in every direction with a uniform pale gray. Birds flew low under the heavy gray canopy. The

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 whistle and rumble of a train several miles away sounded distinct through the still, brooding air; and as he walked along the top of the ridge behind the horses he heard twice the harsh cry of a woodpecker.

"We'll have a terbacker settin' rain afore mornin', Judy," he said, when she came out to help him put up the horses. "Everything says so."

Before they went to bed that night the rain began. Jerry went out and fixed the drain of the eaves trough so that the water would run into the cistern. The next morning it was still coming down in a warm, steady downpour. All day it fell in the same soft, gently-falling stream, like a blessing upon mankind, not from a self-centered Hebrew deity, but from some sweet natured and generous pagan god.

"Bejasus, this'll fetch things along, Judy," said Jerry, who was busily nailing soles on Judith's shoes beside the kitchen window. "Land, haow everything'll pick up after this rain! I sholy do love to see things grow in spring. An' about to-morrow afternoon we kin go to settin'."

The next morning dawned blue and warm, full of birdsong and the scent of wet growing things. The ground was dank with rain, but by afternoon Jerry thought it would be dry enough to begin setting. After breakfast he went to the tobacco bed to pull plants and Judith got on one of the horses and rode over to her father's to get Elmer to come and "drop." As the horse trotted along the top of the ridge and out onto the sodden "pike" full of puddles, she breathed deep of the fragrant air, felt the sun's warmth on her back and shoulders and almost fancied that she was a plant that had sucked in the life-giving rain and was preparing to raise its blossom to the sun.

She returned before long with Elmer, now grown into a loutish chunk of fourteen, all hands and feet and appetite. Elmer rode upon Pete, a young mule that Bill had bought to take the place of Bob, who had died the year before of old age. Pete was of a rich chestnut color, glossy, handsome, and liquid-eyed. He was also intelligent with the super-equine in-

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 telligence of a mule. He had a way of laying back his ears ever so slightly and looking at any one who approached him with a backward-sidewise glance of mingled playfulness and suspicion. It made Judith laugh to see him do this.

"Land, Elmer," she exclaimed, as they were putting up the horse and mule in the shed, "if that critter, Pete, hain't got the look of Uncle Sam Whitmarsh, I never seen two folks that looks alike. Uncle Sam has got jes that same way o' lookin' at you sharp an' sidewise an' yet smilin', as though he kinda suspicioned that you was a-tryin' to git the best of him, an' yet he wanted to be good friends an' have some fun with you too. An' if Uncle Sam could move his ears I'm sure he'd lay 'em back jes a little. They say animals can't smile. But if that mule hain't a-smilin' then what is he a-doin'?"

She patted his glossy neck admiringly. He flicked his ears and looked at her in his characteristic way, then poked his soft nose into her face.

"He's durn hard to ketch up in paster," grunted Elmer. "You come up alongside of him with the bridle, an' he gives you that 'ere look, an' fust thing you know he's a quarter of a mile off. My legs is run clean off since we got him."

After dinner the tobacco setting began. Elmer had the easy job. With a basket of plants on his arm he went along the rows that Jerry had laid off with the plow and dropped the plants at intervals of about eighteen inches, dropping two rows at a time. Jerry and Judith followed behind, each taking a row, and set the plants in the ground. They worked at first with their fingers, until the skin began to wear away. Then Jerry whittled two round, sharp-pointed sticks, and they used these instead of the fingers. With the sharp stick they made a hole in the wet earth, set the plant into it and pressed the earth down about the roots with their fingers.

At first they went along the rows gaily, rallying each other and trying to see which could work the fastest. Sometimes Jerry would get a little ahead and look back teasingly. Then Judith would make her fingers fly and outstrip him and laugh back at him from under her big blue sunbonnet. They soon

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 stopped this, however, and fell into the regular, clockwork routine of those who go through the same set of motions many hundreds of times over, only now and then standing erect for a moment to straighten their cramped legs and ease their aching backs. Very soon they had no energy left to laugh or even talk and plodded along the rows doggedly, silently, seeing only the wet ground and the plants that were to be put into it. The muscles of their legs grew sore and strained from the unusual exercise of constantly kneeling and rising, kneeling and rising. The ache in their backs became sometimes unbearable; and the backs of their necks, held always at tension and beat upon by the hot sun, throbbed with a dull, continual pain. The moisture rising from the soaked ground made the heat heavy and enervating. Their hands cracked and stiffened. The wet clay stuck in layer after layer to their heavy work shoes until they found it hard to lift their feet, and had to stop often to scrape away the caked mud. Elmer, who was barefoot, got along much better. When the strain of constant bending became unendurable and they stood up for relief, the earth swam about them and for a moment everything turned black. They reeled, righted themselves, and went at it again.

They drank enormous quantities of water. Elmer, who was not kept so busy as the other two, had the job of bringing water from the spring in an earthenware molasses jug with a corncob stuck in the neck for a cork. The cool water tasted delicious.

They kept this up until after sunset, as long as they could see the ground and the plants, for no moment of the precious "season" must be wasted. When at last they stopped for want of light and dragged their mud-encrusted feet up the hill and along the ridge toward home, no one of the three spoke a word. Spattered with mud from head to foot, they walked with bent heads and sagging legs, like horses that have tugged all day at the plow through ground too hard for their strength.

"My land, I'm glad I don't have to set terbaccer every day," said Judith, as she fried the cakes. "I'm gonna make the coffee jes three times as strong to-night."

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 After they had eaten and drunk several cups of the rank decoction, they went immediately to bed. When they closed their eyes they could see nothing but tobacco plants standing up stiffly out of wet clay. They fell asleep with this picture painted on the insides of their eyelids.

Jerry had set the alarm clock for three. They seemed to have only just fallen asleep when its insistent ting-a-ling startled them awake. The early dawn was already melting the darkness of the room. Jerry jumped out of bed and in a few seconds had put on his shirt and overalls and was lighting the fire.

"Land alive, I wish I didn't have to get up," yawned Judith, stretching her slim young arms above her head. Reluctantly she put her feet out on the rag mat beside the bed, yawned, stretched, and began to put on her clothes. Elmer, who was still fast asleep in the other room, had to be shaken into consciousness twice before he crawled sleepily out and felt around on the floor for his overalls. They all washed on the bench outside the door, splashing the water about plenteously and rubbing vigorously with the towel to get the sleep out of their eyes. Soon Judith was frying the cakes, and the smell of boiling coffee filled the kitchen. They ate from the unwashed dishes of the night before. After the cakes and coffee they felt better and all three set out together for the tobacco field. This time they all went barefoot.

When they began to work, they found themselves so stiff in every bone and muscle that it seemed at first as if they could not possibly go on. After a while, however, they limbered up and managed to get through the morning. But the afternoon seemed as if it would stretch into eternity. The sun beat down fiercely. The mud caked thicker on their feet and the skin wore thinner on their aching fingers. Twice Judith collapsed and had to go and lie in the shade until her strength returned and the intolerable ache in her back and neck subsided a little. Jerry tried to persuade her to go back to the house and let him and Elmer go on with the setting; but she scorned his male assumption of superior strength and endur-

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 ance. At last the sun sank and the cool evening air revived them a little. Gradually the sky paled, the light grew dimmer, and darkness closing in upon them made the green of the young plants intense and vivid. Still they worked on. At last they began to stumble over clods in the darkness and Elmer could no longer see to separate the plants from each other.

"Thank God we can't do no more to-night," said Jerry, in a tone of intense relief. He rose, straightened his strong young shoulders and surveyed the field.

"We got purty nigh an acre an' three quarters set," he announced. "An' the season's over. Agin to-morrow it'll be too dry."

"Gosh, I'm glad it will," said Judith, rubbing her bare feet on the grass to scrape away some of the caked mud.

Elmer went home that night the proud possessor of a dollar, and Jerry did not set the alarm clock. When they awoke next morning, the sun was high in the sky.

"Ain't you glad you don't have to set terbaccer to-day, Jerry?" said Judith, stretching luxuriously.

"You damn betcha I am," answered Jerry. "But there hain't no rest for the wicked. I gotta git into that corn right away if it's to be saved. The weeds'll grow like wildfire after this rain."

There came a second fairly good rain in early June, and they were able to set another acre of tobacco. A week or so later, it rained for a day and a night; and Jerry, going out next morning to see how deeply the rain had penetrated, was jubilant over his findings.

"She's soaked good, Judy," he called exultantly. "Even if the sun shines hot we'll be able to finish settin'. You git Elmer over this mornin' an' I'll pull plants."

He went off immediately after breakfast to pull plants; but in half an hour he was back, full of anger and disgust.

"You know what's happened, Judy? Somebody's stole near all our plants. There hain't plants left to set a half an acre, an' them's little bits o' runts no good fer nothin'. All them

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 nice big strong plants is took. An' I'm purty nigh sure I know who took 'em, too; an' it's Luke Wolf. He was too damn lazy to water his bed there when it was so dry in April, an' his plants didn't do no good. He didn't have hardly nothing in his bed. So after I found the plants was stole, I clim up on the brow o' the ridge an' looked over; an' there sure enough was him an' Hat a-settin' fer dear life. They had that half witted brother o' Luke's a-droppin' fer 'em. I had a good mind to go daown an' tell 'em to gimme back my plants. But there 'tis. I can't prove he took 'em; but I know damn well he did."

"Ain't that a mean shame!" exclaimed Judith. "An' after all how hard you slaved to save them plants! An' we can't git plants nowhere else, cause nobody hain't got plants this year, count o' the dry spring. You had the finest bed anywheres araound."

"We'll have to put it in corn," said Jerry disgustedly. "An' the corn'll be so late the frost'll take it. If I'd a knowed, I might a saved myse'f the work o' plowin' an' harrowin' the ground. But that's haow it goes. A man works hard to do sumpin for hisself an' his fam'ly, an' then some lousy, thievin' neighbor slinks in an' gits away with it. It sholy is discouragin'."

Judith tried to console Jerry and tried for his sake to appear as indignant and disgusted as he over the loss. But it was not in her nature to take material loss so seriously; and she felt secretly relieved to think that she would not have to set any more tobacco that year. She was ashamed of this feeling, for it seemed like rank disloyalty to Jerry; but she could not help entertaining it.

Luke and Hat Wolf lived in a little ramshackle frame shanty in one of the neighboring hollows. They were a young couple not many years older than Jerry and Judith; but they had been married and had been raising tobacco on the shares for three or four years. They had a well sustained reputation for almost superhuman meanness and stinginess.

They were a pair of young giants. When they drove to-

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 gether in their buggy the springs sagged and passers-by felt sorry for the horse. Luke was a big, stupid looking lout, with small blue eyes and beefy jowls. He could neither read nor write; although Hat had been heard to say on different occasions that Luke could read "some kinds o' print." The kinds that he could read, however, did not include the kind universally employed.

Hat, a big, coarsely made, gipsy-like girl, was, to use her own phrase, a "great reader." She subscribed to a monthly magazine called "The Farm Wife's Friend," which cost her twenty-five cents a year. When she found the magazine in her mail box she took it home eagerly, full of delicious anticipations, and read it from the name in fancy print across the top of the first page to the last advertisement on the back sheet. It was printed in the vilest manner on the sleaziest of paper. Sometimes parts of it were so badly printed as to be illegible. It contained two or three sentimental love stories describing doings of people in high life. These stories abounded in beautiful heroines with delicate hands that had never approached a dish rag or a hoe handle, noble heroes and wicked, but fascinating villains. They opened to Hat a vista of unexplored possibilities and caused her to sigh over her own lack of opportunity.

Almost as engrossing as the stories, were little articles on how to get the best results with turnips, how to make the eyes sparkle, how to keep little chicks from getting head lice, how to remain always a mystery to your husband, how to keep sheets from fraying at the hems, how to make five hundred dollars out of a flock of fifty geese, how to tell fortunes with the tea cup, how to polish cut glass, how to keep the hands dainty and delicate, how to live so that the world is sweeter and sunnier for your presence, how to make orange marmalade out of carrots and how to treat a cow with a caked udder.

All of these "useful hints" Hat read with avidity, and many of them she tried to apply in her own household. She spent hours messing over a stew of mutton fat and cheap perfume in an attempt to make a homemade cold cream for beautifying

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 the skin. After it had stood for a few days it turned rancid and she had to throw it out to the hogs. She became enthusiastic over the possibility of making a big income from geese, set a hundred eggs and hatched out seventy-five little geese, only to have the foxes feed fat on her flock. She mixed up the decoction to make the eyes sparkle; but it hurt her eyes and interfered with her sight. So she used it only once. She tried on Luke the receipt for remaining mysterious; but she was forced into the strong suspicion that he never even knew that anything unusual was affecting him in any way.

These failures did not, however, discourage her in the least. She read and experimented with the next month's collection with unabated enthusiasm. The magazine was her romance, her religion.

There were short poems in the paper, too. "Be a Beam of Sunshine," "Keep Smiling all the While," and "Never Let the Tear Drop Dim Your Eye," were characteristic titles. One poem, which made a deep impression on Hat, celebrated the joy of washing clothes. It described the deep satisfaction to be derived from rubbing, rinsing, bluing, and hanging out the family wash on the line. The constantly recurring refrain was, "And the Wind is Right to Dry." As Hat rubbed out her own faded cotton dresses and aprons and scrubbed manfully on the sweaty collars and wristbands of Luke's work shirts, even when she punished the washboard with his heavy denim overalls, stiffly encrusted with mud and axle grease and many other varieties of filth, and soused them up and down in the dirty, stinking, mouse-gray water, the words of this little poem lilted rhythmically through her mind, and she almost fooled herself into thinking that washing Luke's overalls was a delight. Who can say that the mail order sheet does not bring joy and comfort into the rural home? Nevertheless, Hat was glad when Luke came home one day with the information gleaned from Columbia Gibbs that overalls last twice as long if they are never allowed to see water.

The feature of the "Farm Wife's Friend" that caused her the most deep-seated excitement was the advertisements. The

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 big black type exhorting the reader to "Send no Money," "Win Health and Happiness Without Cost," "Stop Suffering," "Send Two-cent Stamp and Know Your Future," "Make Big Money by Pleasant Work in Spare Time," these caused Hat to get down from the clock shelf the pen, the bottle of ink, and the letter paper and write to such of the advertisers as most appealed to her imagination.

It is true that the answers were usually disappointing. One brought a sample of kidney remedy, for which Hat, never having had any symptoms of kidney trouble, could find no present use. She laid it away carefully, half hoping that she or Luke might need it at some time in the future. The "Pleasant Occupation in Spare Time" people always required you to buy some complicated and expensive apparatus before you could begin to earn money with it. This was the last thing that Hat was prepared to do. She derived her greatest satisfaction from the firms that told your fortune for a dime or read your horoscope if you told them the date of your birth and the color of your eyes and hair; and from those that sent free samples of cosmetics, remedies for chicken diseases and gaudy calendars and bookmarks. There was no thrill in her life greater than that of finding a package in the mail box addressed to herself, of carrying it home in delightful suspense and at last opening the package in secret to see what it contained. The joy of getting something for nothing and of being in secret communication with unknown people appealed both to her cupidity and her thirst for adventure. Luke was not a partner in these pleasures; and as he could neither read nor write, she had no difficulty in keeping him in the dark regarding her correspondence.

Besides the "Farm Wife's Friend," and the carefully studied current almanac, Hat had other literature. She had a book called "Lena Rivers," in a tattered yellow paper cover, and another book entitled "No Wedding Bells For Her," in no cover at all. These two books she had read through at least a dozen times. She had a paper bound dream book which interpreted dreams, not as Professor Freud would do, but in a

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 way much more satisfying to Hat. As she dreamed a good deal, she consulted this book frequently.

The remaining book, and the one that she valued most of all, was a small, much thumbed volume that had lost its cover and its first seven pages. This book was called "Old Secrets and New Discoveries." There was something about the magic word "secret" that made the book especially precious to Hat. Between its covers, or more accurately speaking, between its eighth and its last page, was contained knowledge universal.

On page eight there were given directions "How to Charm Those Whom You Meet and Love." This little article Hat knew by heart.

"When you desire to make any one 'Love' you with whom you meet, although not personally acquainted with him, you can very readily reach him and make his acquaintance if you observe the following directions: Suppose you see him coming toward you in an unoccupied mood, or he is recklessly or passively walking past you, all that remains for you to do at that moment is to concentrate your thought and send it into him, and, to your astonishment, if he was passive, he will look at you, and now is your time to send a thrill to his heart by looking him carelessly, though determinately, into his eyes, and praying with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, that he may read your thought and receive your true Love, which God designs we should bear one another. This accomplished, and you need not and must not wait for a cold-hearted, fashionable and popular Christian introduction; neither should you hastily run into his arms, but continue operating in this psychological manner; not losing any convenient opportunity to meet him at an appropriate place, where an unembarrassed exchange of words will open the door to the one so magnetized. At this interview, unless prudence sanction it, do not shake hands, but let your manners and loving eyes speak with Christian charity and ease. Wherever or whenever you meet again, at the first opportunity grasp his hand in an earnest, sincere and affectionate manner, observing at the same time the following important directions, viz: As you take his bare hand

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 in yours, press your thumb gently, though firmly, between the bones of the thumb and forefinger of his hand, and at the very instant when you press thus on the bloodvessels (which you can before ascertain to pulsate) look him earnestly and lovingly, though not pertly or fiercely, into his eyes, and send all your heart's, mind's and soul's strength into his organization, and he will be your friend, and if you find him not to be congenial you have him in your power, and by carefully guarding against evil influences, you can reform him to suit your own purified, Christian, and loving taste."

Hat loved to read the recipes for anchovy paste and artichokes served with hollandaise sauce, and eagerly devoured the directions for serving a formal dinner of eight courses to a party of twelve guests. Her inability to apply this information did not greatly trouble her. But when she read aloud to Luke the "Hunters' and Trappers' Secrets," she felt somewhat aggrieved because the knowledge thus obtained did not result in an immediate increase of rabbits and muskrats and an equally rapid decrease of the foxes that slaughtered her geese; and her opinion of Luke, always a low one, dropped a peg lower.

On one occasion, when he appeared to have gotten the worst of it in a horse trade, she upbraided him bitterly for not having applied the information contained in her book.

"Huh," retorted Luke, glaring at her across the supper table. "Anybody'd think to listen to you that that measly little half-page in that 'ere damn book o' yourn tells all there is to know about a hoss. Why, I know more about hosses, jes from handlin' 'em, than the print in all yer books together cud tell."

"Well, then, if ye know so much, why did you let 'em put over a lame hoss on ye?" she flashed angrily.

"Land alive, woman," Luke's tone was high pitched with exasperation, "do you s'pose Gad A'mighty c'n tell a lame hoss when he's shot full o' stuff to make him so's he hain't lame? Haow cud I know he was lame when he wa'n't lame when I traded fer 'im? Besides, naow, I've looked him over,

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 I know jes what's wrong with him. He hain't got but a little start of a ringbone; an' I kin burn that out an' have 'im cured in a month. Wimmin like you makes a man sick. You hain't got sense to pound sand with all yer books."

"Oh, hain't we though? Well, I hate to think o' the filthy, foul-livin' critters you men'd be if it wa'n't fer us wimmin. You'd go right back to be savages; an' you hain't fur off from it naow."

Hat also considered herself something of a musician, performing by ear on a fiddle handed down from her grandfather, who had been a fiddler and a caller off of dances.

When Jerry and Judith came to live in the neighborhood, Hat was the first to call upon the bride. Life was lonely back in the deep hollow where she and Luke lived, far from even the sound of a passing wagon; and the company of Luke had long since ceased to be stimulating. Last year, too, all the near neighbors had been old people. Hat was glad that somebody young and lively had come to take the place of the doddering old Patton couple who had lived there the year before.

Not many days after the new arrivals had moved in, Hat appeared one afternoon in the dooryard. She was dressed for visiting. She had on a clean pink and white checked frock and the inevitable little white apron. On her head was a starched pink sunbonnet. She was a tremendous creature, both tall and stout, and her skin was coarse. But she looked handsome in a dark, bold, gipsy-like way. Judith, who was neither small nor delicate, looked like a frail blossom beside her.

"Well, if it hain't Hat Wolf!" exclaimed Judith, who was bringing a bucket of water from the cistern. She set the bucket down and hastened to meet her visitor.

"My, but I'm glad you've come to live here, Judy," said Hat, with genuine enthusiasm. "Las' year I got so's I wouldn't come over here no matter haow lonesome I was, 'cause old Aunt Jinny Patton wouldn't do nothing but set an' sigh an' say she knew the Lord was a-goin' to take her soon. Old people is that tiresome. Naow you an' me, when we hain't got

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 much to do, kin visit each other. An' I'll lend you my books an' you kin lend me yourn; an' we'll sew rags together an' have good times. You know it gits awful lonesome in these hollers, an' anybody needs neighbors. Tain't like livin' on the pike."

Judith proudly showed Hat her new chicken coops, the four dozen hens that her father had given her, the place that they had selected for a garden spot and the shepherd pup which a neighbor had given them, a fluffy ball of black and white silk, trimmed, as nature knows how to trim, with soft tan. Then she led her into the house and showed her, piece by piece, all her wedding finery, her new sheets and towels and her bright bedquilts. Hat examined all these things with deep interest and exclaimed over them with unfeigned admiration. In the intervals of looking at the things to which Judith called her attention, her bold black eyes travelled about the room and took in every detail of its floor, walls, and furnishings. Nothing escaped her. She was alive with that small curiosity so frequent in farmers' wives, which causes them to take note of the smallest minutiæ of their neighbors' interiors. When she went away she carried in her mind an exact photograph of Judith's two rooms and of her dooryard. She even knew that Judith's clothesline was a wire and not a rope one. Such capacity for detail does solitude engender in the female mind.

"Well," she said at last, when she was prepared to leave, "I'll have to be a-gittin' along back home. I got a right smart o' little chicks hatched out an' I want to raise every one of 'em an' make as much as I kin this summer. It gits dark early in our holler, an' the rats begin to run around most afore the sun's gone. So I'd best git back an' git the chicks cooped up. I can't trust nothin' to Luke. Come over, Judy."

"Yes, you come agin, Hat."

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summer days came and went, bringing with them the usual routine that goes with the raising of tobacco in Scott County. After the plants had been set they wilted and looked as though they were dying. Many of them did actually die and had to be replaced by new plants. For about three weeks they scarcely seemed to grow at all. Indeed, they appeared to shrink, rather than grow; for the outer leaves died away leaving only the heart alive. All this time, however, the young plants were establishing themselves, accommodating their roots to the new soil and putting down deeper shoots into the ground. All at once, and with one accord, they began to grow with great rapidity. The small specks of green rose and spread, the leaves lengthened and broadened; and in a few weeks plant touched plant and shaded the ground.

When the plants were about three feet high, Jerry and Judith went through the rows "topping" them. With the thumb and forefinger they pinched off the central bud which, if allowed to grow, would shoot up and develop into flower and seed. This made the plants shorter, broader, and stockier and sent all the life into the great, succulent leaves. When Jerry and Judith worked at this task, their hands became covered with the thick, sticky, yellow juice of the plants. It took several changes of water to wash away this rank, poisonous sap; and the remaining stains were slow in wearing off.

The tobacco worms, too, were things that had to be contended with. All other plant pests leave tobacco alone, preferring more wholesome pasture. But there is one worm especially created to feast upon the tobacco plant. To this creature the deadly juice of the leaves means health and plenty. It resembles a tomato worm, but it is larger, longer, greener, and more many-legged. If it is allowed to live, its depreda-

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 tions are tremendous. Every week or so Jerry and Judith went through the tobacco plants with an old tin can in one hand and a stick in the other and knocked these offending vermin into the cans. When the rounds were completed they took the cans home and burned their contents in the cookstove.

It was not enough to cultivate the tobacco with the plow. It had to be hoed, too. To make its best growth each plant required individual attention. They chopped the ground about the plants with great hoes made especially for heavy work. The hard clay, baked flinty by the hot sunshine, resisted the hoes with all its might. It always seemed to Judith that her row would never come to an end. And when, after slow and toilsome progress, she at last reached the end, there were innumerable more rows waiting to be done. She was forced to admit that Jerry was her superior in the tobacco field. He could hoe three rows while she was doing one; and at evening, though tired, he was by no means at the end of his strength. It was very hot in the southward sloping field. The sun beat down mercilessly and the plants exhaled a heavy, sickening odor. She could feel the sweat standing out on her face, and rolling down her legs. It tickled and irritated her skin, and now and then she stopped to scratch viciously. Sometimes the acrid streams poured into her eyes and for the moment blinded her. When a breeze sprang up and swept across the tobacco field, its touch on her wet body made her feel almost cold. After it had died away the heavy quiet fell like a great, stifling blanket over the earth and it seemed twice as hot as before. Still she and Jerry plodded on with the patient persistence of those born and reared to a life of toil.

Not much visiting went on between Hat and Judith that summer; for the tobacco field claimed them both.

But Judith was young and buoyant. Tobacco did not have to be hoed every day; and these seasons of hard and continuous toil gave to the less strenuous days something of the feeling of holidays. In spite of the tobacco crop, life remained full of pleasures for Judith. She liked to work in her garden and see the beans and peas and cabbages making sturdy

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 growth under her care. She liked to feed her chickens and turkeys morning and evening and note how fast the little chicks and young turkeys were growing and how strong and firm were their bodies. She liked to set hens and care for the little chicks after they came out of the shell. She planted morning glories and nasturtiums about the house and trained them up on rude trellises made of tobacco sticks. The summer was full of radiant mornings a-quiver with sunshine with sweet smells and the carolling of birds, and cool, quiet evenings when she and Jerry sat together on the doorstep through the slow-falling midsummer twilight until the familiar outline of hills and trees melted into a blur of darkness and the last sleepy twitter of little birds drowsed into silence. To Judith, as to the growing plants and the wild things of the fields and woods, the sun still meant joyous life and growth, its absence, peace and sleep. She was not much more given to thinking than was the mocking bird in the hickory tree over the house; and she enjoyed her life even as he.

In September the tobacco ripened. The leaves turned from green to a rich gold and the crop was ready to harvest. Jerry refused to let Judith help with this strenuous task and hired his brother Andy instead. When the two men came in from the field after "cuttin their hands, faces and clothes were smeared thickly with the sticky tobacco sap and its rank odor filled the kitchen.

After the tobacco had been allowed to wilt in the field, they hauled it to Hiram Stone's nearest tobacco barn, a big structure built on the top of the ridge about half a mile from Jerry's field.

It was a great relief to Jerry when the last load was hauled in and hung up. So many things can happen to spoil a tobacco crop that he had lived in constant anxiety ever since the plants had been set in the ground. The weather had favored Scott County that year, and the tobacco was heavy and of fine quality.

"Naow, by gollies, if she don't up an' heat in the barn the crop's made," he said to himself.

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 The outdoor work with the crop was over and the rest was on the knees of the gods. Jerry now had his corn to work with. As he cut the corn and stacked it in shocks, and as he and Judith together shucked out the ears, Jerry watched the weather with an anxious eye. If there came a warm, damp day, he grew uneasy; and a succession of warm, damp days sent him to the tobacco barn to examine anxiously the yellowish-brown bunches and open the doors wider so that the air could circulate more freely.

"If she heats an' spiles now after all our work, won't it be a dirty shame?" he said to Judith one day, when she had accompanied him on one of these visits.

"I wonder if there's anything the matter with the terbaccer, Jerry? It don't somehow seem to smell right to me," said Judith, sniffing the air critically. "I allus did love the smell of terbaccer a-dryin' in the barn. But this kinda makes me feel sick to my stummick."

"Smells all right to me," opined Jerry. "Smells durn good." He sniffed again.

"Must be sumpin wrong with your smeller, Judy."

"I dunno what's wrong," doubted Judith, "but it sholy hain't got a good smell to me."

As the days passed, Judith began to notice that other things besides the tobacco had a queer, unnatural, slightly nauseating smell. She supposed at first that she had eaten something that had disagreed with her and that the effect would pass off in a day or so. The trouble, however, grew worse instead of better. It came on so slowly, so subtly and insidiously, that she was in its grip before she fully realized that there had been a change. She thought that the first time that she had noticed anything unusual in her feelings was the day at the tobacco barn. But she could not be sure. As she looked back she imagined that she had felt other queer sensations even before that. The beginnings of the strange disease were shrouded in mystery.

Some canned salmon that they had for dinner a few days after the visit to the tobacco barn did not taste good at all.

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 Judith could not understand why. She had always loved canned salmon. It was a store delicacy rarely indulged in and hence much relished by the rural population of Scott County.

"What's wrong with this here salmon, Jerry?" she asked, turning it over listlessly with her fork. "It hain't spiled, an' yet it don't taste good, nohaow."

"Tastes good to me," said Jerry. "I cud eat a barrel of it. Gimme yours if you hain't a-goin' to eat it."

She gave him what was left on her plate and he ate it greedily and finished the can.

"I'm afraid you've worked too hard in the field this summer, Judy," he said anxiously. "I hadn't otta let you."

"I don't hardly think it's that," she answered languidly. There was no trace left of her usual animation. She seemed a different person.

As day after day passed and she got no better, she began to realize that a great change had taken place in herself and in the world about her. Nothing seemed at all the same. The fields and lanes, the dooryard, and particularly the house, were full of lurking, insidious stenches that attacked her on every hand and turned her stomach. Everything that she looked at seemed to have something ugly and repulsive about it. The very morning glories and nasturtiums were gaudy and tiresome and the smell of the nasturtiums sickened her. She particularly loathed the sights and smells of the kitchen and fled from them as often as she could. The odor of frying fat, of burning wood, or of beans boiling on the stove sent her reeling to the outside. There she gulped great draughts of the pure air, and as she grew calmer, breathed long and deep until her nausea had subsided. She found that she suffered much less when out of doors and would have stayed there all the time if she had not had to cook for Jerry. She did it as long as she could hold out. But sometimes it was too much for her, and she had to lie down in the bedroom and let Jerry find himself something to eat as best he could.

She detested the kitchen. The oilcloth-covered table, the blue dishes formerly so much prized, the coffee pot, and the

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 big white water pitcher were objects of loathing to her. She hated the sight of the calendars and little pictures that she had tacked on the walls. There was one picture that particularly irritated her, though she could not have told why. It was a still life representing dead grouse and partridges lying on a table. One day she took the picture down from the wall and stuffed it into the stove, getting at least a momentary feeling of satisfaction from hearing it crackle up the stovepipe.

There was one dish that seemed to her especially odious, a berry bowl that Lizzie May had given her as a wedding present. It was made of imitation Tiffany glass, and she had thought it lovely until this strange malady had seized upon her. Now she could not bear to look at the crude bronze and green and purple lights that it cast at her. It seemed an evil and poisonous thing. She poked it into the bottom of one of the bureau drawers and covered it up with sheets and pillow slips.

Jerry, too, came in for his share of the general odium. She developed a great dislike for certain little inoffensive habits that he had, such as rubbing his hands together over the fire, whistling loudly as he went about his chores and teasing the pup for the fun of hearing him growl and snap. When he kissed her, which she now rarely allowed him to do, she was conscious with a shiver of repugnance that he needed a shave and that he had been chewing tobacco.

One afternoon, when existence about the house seemed intolerable, she put on her sunbonnet and started out on the cowpath that led along the top of the ridge and down into the hollow where Hat and Luke lived.

Hat was plucking geese in the back dooryard. This side of the house was littered with an accumulation of broken boards, rusty pieces of scrap iron, old rags, papers, empty bottles, discarded cooking utensils and rusted-out tin cans. Hat was not the pink-and-white vision that she had been on the day when she had first visited Judith. She wore a ragged calico wrapper, faded by much sun and many washings, into a dismal drab. About her waist was pinned a greasy gunny

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 sack to serve as an apron. The short ends of her coarse black hair hung in uncombed rattails about her face; and her great feet, planked firmly on the ground with the toes turned in, were bare and very dirty. Her clothes, her hair, and her perspiring face were powdered thickly with the down from the feathers which fell like snow about her and frosted the ground for yards around. Between her knees she gripped the goose's head and with her big, coarse hands plucked away great handfuls of the soft, white, fluffy down from the breast and under the wings and stuffed them into a stiff paper flour sack that stood open at her side. The goose struggled and squawked mightily. Hat only gripped the prisoner more firmly between her great knees and went about her task more vigorously.

As Judith came up she was greeted by a strong smell of pigsty. Luke had had a good corn crop and was fattening several hogs that fall. Three or four lean hounds that were slinking about the dooryard barked in a perfunctory, spasmodic way, then relapsed into silence. Hat stopped for a moment to try to brush away with her down-covered hand some of the fluff that clung irritatingly about her eyes.

"Land alive, Judy, I sholy do hate to pick geese," she gasped. "I git all het up, an' then the durn stuff sticks in the sweat, an' you wouldn't believe haow it itches me. But it's gotta be done, an' there hain't nobody else that'll do it. Feathers is a good price this year. An' when these feathers is turned into money, it's me that's a-goin' to handle it. Las' time we sold feathers, Luke he got holt o' the money an' that's the last I ever seen of it. An' it was me that raised 'em an' fed 'em an' picked 'em an' done every durn thing."

Hat's voice trembled with anger and self-pity. Judith opened her mouth to start to say something; but Hat did not wait to hear what it might be. She was seething with a sense of wrong and glad to have somebody in whom to confide.

"The men sholy do have it easy compared with us wimmin, Judy," she continued. "Here all this summer I worked like a dawg in the terbaccer a-settin' an' a-toppin' an' a-hoein' an' a-wormin' an' a-cuttin'; an' all the fore part o' the winter I'll

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 spend a-strippin'. An' then along about Christmas Luke'll haul the terbaccer off to Lexington an' sell it an' put the money in his pocket an' I won't never see a dollar of it. An' if I even want a few cents to buy me calico for a, I gotta most go daown on my knees an' beg for it. I work jes as hard in the crop as he does. An' then what does he do while I cook an' wash dishes an' clean the house an' do the washin' an' tend the chickens an' turkeys? He feeds an' tends the hosses. That's what he's got to do outside of his crop. He hain't never picked a goose in his life; an' he wouldn't pick one if they died for lack o' pickin'. He says pickin' geese is wimmin's work. I tell you what I'm a-goin' to do. Nex' summer I ain't a-goin' to touch hand to his corn ner his durn terbaccer crop. If pickin' geese is wimmin's work, settin' an' hoein' terbaccer is man's work, an' he kin do it hisse'f 'ithout any he'p from me. I'm jes sick an' tired of slavin' like a mule an' gittin' nothin' fer it."

She paused on the brink of tears. A large tortoise shell cat arched her back and rubbed herself against the legs of her mistress, then reached up her head and sniffed delicately at the goose.

"An' then," she went on in the next breath, "with all his huntin' foxes most every night an' keepin' all them lazy haounds a-slinkin' raound the place an' a-eatin' up the feed the chickens otta have, he can't keep the foxes from gittin' my geese. Las' night when I went to ketch 'em up to coop 'em I found my biggest goose was missin'. An' this mornin' when I was a-lookin' up my turkeys, sure nuf I come on the feathers jes over that little hill yonder. I was that vexed an' disgusted. Think of it! Him an' all his durn haounds together ain't as smart as one fox! An' what's he a-doin' naow, while I'm a-slavin' an' a-sweatin' over these geese? He's a-standin' yonder by the shed a-chawin' terbaccer an' a-gassin' with young Bob Crupper. He's been there in that one spot this good two hours, an' he'll be there like enough till chore time to-night. Men makes me sick; always a-sunnin' theirselves around the barnyard like flies on a dunghill."

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 She stopped, exhausted by her passionate jeremiad, and relaxed her hold upon the goose, which she had finished plucking. It ran off squawking indignantly. She made a vain attempt to scatter the down from about her nostrils by blowing upward, then brushed her nose frantically with her furry hand. "Ouf," she puffed, irritated beyond endurance by the clinging stuff.

Judith looked in the direction of the wagon shed and saw Luke and Bob Crupper leaning in easy attitudes against an old spring wagon that was drawn up outside the shed. From time to time they changed the weight of their bodies from one leg to the other or spat idly into the scattered straw. As she was looking, she saw Bob Crupper turn his head in her direction for a moment and then say something to Luke. Luke made some reply, and she could see the two men laughing together. Hat, too, had noticed the little pantomime.

"I wonder what them two was a-sayin'?" said Judith, casting another look in the direction of the two men.

"Sumpin nasty, I'll betcha," snapped Hat in a tone of disgust. "When men gits to laffin' together you kin be sure one or 'nother of 'em has come out with some dirty talk."

Judith knew that there was much truth in Hat's accusation; and she had a momentary feeling of curiosity as to what had been said, for she felt sure that it had been about herself.

Hat went to the coop to get another goose and came back carrying the big white bird with its head under her arm. The intelligent creature seized a moment when Hat's arm muscles were somewhat relaxed to wrench its head free and bite her captor viciously on the hand. She screamed shrilly with pain and anger.

"Damn the critter!" she cried, wrenching her hand loose and stuffing the offending head back under her arm. "Lord love you, Judy, you hain't got no idea haow hard a goose kin bite."

"I have, too," answered Judith. "I bin bit more'n once."

"I wisht Luke had," said Hat, glancing darkly in the direction of her husband, as she settled herself to the task of pluck-

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 ing. "Have you hearn the last news abaout Ziemer Whitmarsh, Judy, an' the way he's been a-carryin' on with Minnie Pooler?"

"I ain't hearn nothing lately nor been nowhere," answered Judith. "I been a-feelin' so bad I ain't cared to go nowhere nor do nothin'. I'd jes as leave be dead as feel the way I been a-feelin' lately."

"Why, what kin ail you, Judy? You've allus been so strong an' hearty."

Judith began to tell Hat about how she had been feeling for the past two weeks or so. As she went into the details of her symptoms, a look of interest, of satisfaction, and of amused patronage came into Hat's face and widened into a broad grin which seemed to Judith at first disagreeable and then revolting.

"Why, Judy Pippinger, d'you mean to tell me you don't know what ails you?"

"Haow should I know? I don't know nothing about diseases."

Hat broke into a coarse laugh.

"You hain't got no disease, Judy, no more'n this here goose has a disease. You got a young un in yer insides. That's what's wrong with ye. You was kinda lucky it didn't come sooner."

With the last remark, Hat shot a swift, sharp glance at her visitor.

Judith was so taken by surprise that she scarcely noticed the meaning glance. It took her a full half minute to absorb the new idea. It was a possibility that of late had not occurred to her, although the thought of it had caused her some needless worry earlier in her relations with Jerry. She felt humiliated at disclosing what Hat appeared to consider such crass ignorance and disgusted at an indefinable something in Hat's attitude.

"But Hat, a caow ain't sick when she's a-fixin' to have a calf," she said at last, looking straight at Hat with her clear, level, searching eyes.

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 "Wimmin has troubles caows don't never even dream on. You'll find that out afore you're married long," said Hat darkly. From this cryptic prophecy she launched into a description of the pregnant state and went into the subject in all its ramifications. She did not tell Judith how it came that she who had never had a child knew so many intimate details regarding the symptoms of pregnancy. That after all was her own affair.

Judith listened with a mixture of interest and disgust. She wished to know all that she could find out on this as on any other matter that concerned her life. But she was revolted by Hat's whispered undertone and her air of salacious secrecy. She was glad to cut her visit short on the plea that she had work to do at home. When she left, the two men were still standing in the same attitudes by the wagon shed.

As she walked homeward along the top of the ridge, she was glad to look out over the broad expanse of clean earth, to draw in deep breaths of pure, hilltop air and to shake from her the close and fœtid atmosphere of Hat's hollow.

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felt less abjectly miserable after she had learned the cause of her distress of body. As time passed, her symptoms became gradually less violent, and at last disappeared altogether. The nausea passed away, and she was able to eat again and enjoy her food. The pictures on the wall took on their old, natural look; and she got out Lizzie May's present from under the sheets and pillow slips in the bureau drawer and found it once more a delight to her eyes.

It was good to feel like herself once more and to be able to get pleasure instead of loathing from the multitudinous small things that make up the major part of life. It was like waking up from some dismal nightmare and finding the earth still a good and pleasant place. The happiness of freedom regained more than equaled the irk of the old bondage. And as Judith stretched and laughed and enjoyed the rain and the sun and ate heartily and loved Jerry more than she had ever loved him before and felt herself overflowing with physical wellbeing and spiritual content, she knew the joy of reacting to perhaps the most powerful stimulant in life, the elixir of sharp contrast.

And now that she was well again there was plenty of work for her to do. The tobacco, which had survived the warm, damp seasons fatal to many a tobacco crop, must be stripped and stripped quickly, so that Jerry could haul it off to market before the price dropped. Jerry had bulked the tobacco early in November, and had been stripping for some time. But it was slow work for one pair of hands. Now that Judith was able to help him, things went faster.

They got up in the dark, chilly winter mornings long before it was day, ate breakfast and did the morning chores by lamplight, and were ready to go out into the slow, gray dawn while

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 the sky was still only faintly alight and the familiar outlines of the barnyard only dimly visible. The last thing that they did before leaving was to scatter food for the hens, which had not yet come from the roosts. Then they climbed the hill to the ridge path that led to the big tobacco barn.

At the far end of the ridge, the tobacco barn lifted its weathered bulk into the sky. Built on the highest point of land, the wide sweep of lonely fields and pastures dropped away from it in every direction. Its roofs fell from the ridgepole with the broad sweep of a buzzard's wing; and it seemed like some great bird brooding over the wide, solitary expanse, or like some gigantic, incense-breathing temple built by these poor shanty dwellers to their one god, the all-powerful god of toil. From its point of vantage it dominated the landscape, somber, strong, and implacable.

But to Jerry and Judith it was only a tobacco barn and they hurried to it as the factory hand goes to his daily dungeon.

By the time they reached the little stripping room that leaned wearily against the tobacco barn, it would be light enough to begin to strip. They shared this stripping room with Hat and Luke, the two couples working at opposite ends of the little oblong box. Sometimes Hat and Luke would be there already, and in that case the fire would be lighted. If they were the first to arrive, Jerry would quickly light the fire in the little rusty box stove and they would settle down to work.

All day long they would stand stripping the soft brown silk leaves from the thick, woody brown stalks, tying them in bunches and assorting them according to color and texture. The softest, silkiest, most pliable, and lightest colored leaves were the best in quality. Descending from this there were many grades ending in the scraggy, reddish top leaves, torn and discolored leaves and leaves that had been touched by frost.

At noon the two couples, still at opposite ends of the room, would eat the lunches that they had brought with them and immediately fall to work again, working steadily until the

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