"`He is my boy more than yours,' said I, `if love means anything. I can't make you answer me, but some time pretty soon you'll have to answer his Maker and yours, and you'd best reckon up in time, for as sure as you go on as you are going now, you'll have to bury him; and that's my last word.' "He gave an angry laugh at that, and said my last words came pretty often; but I saw him looking curiously at Jim that night, and I guess he'd have let him take it easier for a spell if Jim had known how to take it easy. But there was just so much to do, and he kept on along with the rest. It was Asher, the second one, who gave out first. "Once or twice he had complained to me that he had dizzy turns, when he kind of lost himself, and I had doctored him a little, not thinking him very sick, till one day they brought him home from the field insensible; and, if he ever knew any of us again, he could never tell us so, and he died in just a week after he was brought home. Yes, we had a doctor. Jim went twenty miles for one without asking any one's leave. He came twice, but he couldn't help him. All the time he was sick I never spoke a word to his father about him unless he first spoke to me, till one day, when he came in from his work, he found his boy lying still and white, with his hands clasped on his breast, dressed ready for the grave. "`He'll never be tired any more,' I said. "He turned and went out without a word; and Asher's name was never spoken between us for years after that. "It was different with Jim. He kept on till the winter he was eighteen; and I shall always be glad to remember how easy and pleasant his last days were made to him. It was a mild winter, and he kept about doing something or other most of the time. His father, let him do pretty much as he liked, and went on hoping that the spring would make him all right again. He even talked of sending him back to the old place for a change when the summer came; and Jim used to listen, and sometimes said what he would do when he got there. But he knew better. He knew he was dying, and he was not afraid. But he had something he wanted to do before he could be quite willing to go. "One day, after he had been sitting beside me quietly thinking for awhile, he said--`It's hard on father.' "`Has anything happened to the fall wheat, or to any of the horses? What is it that is hard on him?' said I. "He shook his head, turning to me with a strange grieved look in his eyes. "`It is hard that he should have to lose another of his boys,' said he. "`He should have taken better care of them, and he might have kept them,' said I. "`Mother,' said Jim, `I think _you_ are hard on father sometimes.' "`Am I? Oh, well, I guess nothing that I'm likely to say or do will ever hurt him much!' But I knew he was right in a way. "`Mother, come in here. I want you to lie down on the bed, and I will sit beside you. You are all tired out. And I have got something that I want to tell you.'