Mary stood silent with a hurt look on her face. How could John ask Sally to spend the day when he knew how tired she was? It was all she could do to keep the tears back. "It's my opinion," said John, "that we'll never see that chart again. I believe it's gone like grandfather Ervin's beaver hat." Mary knew the story of the beaver hat. It was a family legend of the supernatural that John was fond of telling. But she had little faith that her chart had gone the way of grandfather Ervin's hat, and she went back to the kitchen, wondering how John could have been so thoughtless, and dreading the day after to-morrow that would bring Sally and those troublesome children. John followed her, and opening the stove door, he gently stirred the ashes within, thus effacing the last trace of the chart; then he took his way to the barn, where he sank down on a pile of fodder and laughed till the tears ran down his face. "Edwin Booth couldn't 'a' done it better," he gasped. "I reckon I'll have to quit farmin' and go on the stage. Didn't know I was such a born actor. It was actin' a lie, too, but it's put a stop to Mary's troubles, and I don't feel like repentin' yet. I reckon you might call it a lie of 'necessity and mercy', like the work that's allowed on the Sabbath day." And at that precise moment Sally was saying to Dan: "Did you ever see a man so put out over anything as John Crawford was over not findin' that chart? If he'd lost his watch or his purse, he couldn't have put himself to more pains to find it. There never was a more accommodatin' neighbor than Mary, and John's just like her. You don't often see a couple as well matched. Generally, if one's accommodatin' and neighborly, the other's stingy and mean. But Mary wasn't a bit more anxious to find that chart for me than John was." That night after supper John seated himself on the front porch. The warm spring air was sweet with the perfume of May bloom, and from every pond there was a chorus of joy over the passing of winter. He heard the voices of his children and his wife talking together as Mary washed the dishes, Lucy Ellen wiped them, and little John placed them on the table. Home, wife, children, and the spring of the year! The heart of the man was glad and he smiled at the thought of the deed he had done that afternoon. "John," said Mary, coming out on the porch with the dish towel over her arm, "hadn't you better be looking for that chart? You know you promised Sally, and I don't want her to be disappointed again." The light from one of the front windows shone full on John's face, and something about his eyes and mouth gave Mary a sudden revelation. "John," she said severely, "do you know where that chart is?" John returned her gaze with unflinching eyes. "Mary," he said slowly and deliberately, "I do not know where that chart is." Another lie? Oh, no! When a thing is dust and ashes, who knows where it is?