"I want you to hush all that drivel, Sam," the widow retorted. "I reckon folks are different. Some are born with a natural dread of death, and it was always in my family. I stood over my mother and watched her breathe her last, and it went awfully hard with her. She begged and begged for somebody to save her, even sitting up in bed while all the neighbors were crouched about crying and praying, and yelled out to them to stop that and do something. We’d called in every doctor for forty miles about, and she had somehow heard of a young one away off, and she was calling out his name when she fell back and died." "Well, she must have had some load on her mind that she wasn’t ready to dump at the throne," said Sam, without a hint of humor in his drawling voice. "I’ve always understood your folks, in the woman line at least, was unforgiving. They say forgiveness is the softest pillow to expire on. I dunno, I’ve never tried it." "I’m miserable, simply miserable!" groaned Jane. "Dr. Evans has just been to Darley. He promised to see if any of my old friends would lend me the money, but he says nobody had a cent to spare." "Folks never have cash for an investment of that sort," answered Sam. "I fetched up your case to old Milward Dedham at the store the other day. He’d just sold five thousand acres of wild mountain land to a Boston man for the timber that was on it, and was puffed up powerful. I thought if ever a man would be prepared to help a friend he would. ’La me, Sam,’ said he, ’you are wasting time trying to keep a woman from pegging out when wheat’s off ten cents a bushel. Any woman ought to be happy lying in a grave that is paid for sech times as these.’" The widow was really not listening to Sam’s talk. With her bony elbows on her knee, her hand intuitively resting on the painless and yet insistent seat of her trouble, she rocked back and forth, sighing and moaning. There was a clicking of the gate-latch, a step on the gravelled walk, and Virginia, flushed from exercise in the cool air, came in and emptied her apron in the chimney corner, from which her uncle lazily dragged his feet. He leaned forward and critically scanned the heap of wood. "You’ve got some good, rich, kindling pine there, Virginia," he drawled out. "But you needn’t bother after to-day, though. I’ll have my wagon back from the shop to-morrow, and Simpson has promised to lend me his yoke of oxen, and let me haul some logs from his hill. Most of it is good, seasoned red oak, and when it gets started to burning it pops like a pack of fire-crackers." Virginia said nothing. Save for the firelight, which was a red glow from live coals, rather than any sort of flame, the big room was dark, and her mother took no notice of her, but Sam had his eyes on her over his left shoulder.