She put her apron up to her face and burst out crying now. Her mother heart had at last conquered her fear of her husband. “I hain’t a-lookin’ fer comfort, Marthy,” said the old farmer, stubbornly. “The facts of the case is clear, an’ we’ve got tew face ’em!” “Yew mean we’ve got tew leave the old home an’ go tew the Poor Farm, I s’pose,” was the answer. “Oh, Joshuy! It’s hard, an’ I ain’t done nothin’ tew deserve it!” Joshua Marlowe arose and paced the floor excitedly. For the first time in his life he began to feel the twinges of a rebuking conscience. Only two years before he had been a fairly prosperous farmer, with a good wife and three of the prettiest daughters to be found in that section. When Tom Wilders, a lean, lanky, close-fisted farmer from his own town, asked to marry Samantha; he gave her to him without a word, and his eldest daughter, who inherited her mother’s meekness, accepted him for a husband, knowing that she loathed the fellow. Only a little while after the marriage, Tom Wilders called on the deacon. His interview with his father-in-law was strictly private, but in some way it cost the deacon exactly five hundred dollars. Where he got the money no one knew for a time, but very soon Silas Johnson, another neighbor, began suing boldly for the hand of Dollie Marlowe. Dollie was only seventeen, but she had more spirit than Samantha, and, better yet, she had her sister Marion to protect her. For what the rest of the women of the Marlowe family lacked in spirit, beautiful, gray-eyed Marion made up in full. As she grew older she developed the determination of her father, but it was backed by honor and good judgment, and her love for her twin sister made her as fearless as a lion. Quite by accident Marion learned of her father’s reason for assenting to Silas Johnson’s suit. He had given Silas a mortgage on the farm for five hundred dollars in order to obtain the money to loan to Tom Wilders. Now, when the mortgage was to be foreclosed and the old people turned out, Tom, the dutiful son-in-law, not only refused to pay up, but he also refused to even harbor his wife’s parents. There was still a mystery about the loan of the money, but neither Mrs. Marlowe nor Samantha dared to question their husbands, and there was not a scrap of paper to prove the transaction. “Ef Marion wuz here, she’d sift this thing tew the bottom,” thought poor, weak Mrs. Marlowe, as she sat and wept, and then for, perhaps, the first time in her life, she turned and bitterly berated her husband. “Yew’ve done it all, Joshuy!” she said, lowering her apron. “Yew tied Samanthy hand and foot tew the stingiest critter this side er Jordan, an’, what’s more, yew’ve driv both Marion and Dollie from their own father’s door—yew’ve done it, an’ some day yew’ll answer fer it, Joshuy!” Her husband paused in his nervous pacing, and stared at her wonderingly. There was a red flush of shame creeping over his wrinkled forehead.