Maw was standing by the stove, a queer look in her eyes; so queer that Luke didn’t speak at once. He limped over to finger the spilled treasures on the table. “Gee! Lookit, Maw! More o’ them prunes we liked so; an’ a bag o’ early peaches; an’ fresh soup meat fur a week—” A queer trembling had seized his mother. She was so white he was frightened. “Did you sense what it meant, Luke—what Aunt Molly told us about Matty Bisbee? We was left out deliberate—that’s what it meant. Her an’ me that was raised together an’ went to school and picnics all our girlhood together! Never could see one ’thout the other when we was growin’ up—Jim Bisbee knew that too! But”—her voice wavered miserably—“I didn’t get no invite to her funeral. I don’t count no more, Lukey. None of us, anywheres.... We’re jest them poor Gawd-forsaken Hayneses.” She slipped down suddenly into a chair and covered her face, her thin shoulders shaking. Luke went and touched her awkwardly. Times he would have liked to put his arms round Maw—now more than ever; but he didn’t dare. “Don’t take on, Maw! Don’t!” “Who’s takin’ on?” She lifted a fierce, sallow, tear-wet face. “Hain’t no use makin’ a fuss. All’s left’s to work—to work, an’ die after a while.” “I hate ’em! Uncle Clem an’ her, I mean.” “They mean kindness—their way.” But her tears started afresh. “I hate ’em!” Luke’s voice grew shriller. “I’d like—I’d like—Oh, damn ’em!” “Don’t swear, boy!” It was Tom who broke in on them. “It’s a letter from Rural Free Delivery. He jest dropped it.” He came up, grinning, with the missive. The mother’s fingers closed on it nervously. “From Nat, mebbe—he ain’t wrote in months.” But it wasn’t from Nat. It was a bill for a last payment on the “new harrow,” brought three years before. II One of the earliest memories Luke could recall was the big blurred impression of Nat’s face bending over his crib of an evening. At first flat, indefinite, remote as the moon, it grew with time to more human, intimate proportions. It became the face of “brother,” the black-haired, blue-eyed big boy who rollicked on the floor with or danced him on his knee to— This is the way the lady rides! Tritty-trot-trot; tritty-trot-trot! Or who, returning from school and meeting his faltering feet in the lane, would toss him up on his shoulder and canter him home with mad, merry scamperings. Not that school and Nat ever had much in common. Even as a little shaver Luke had realized that, Nat was the family wilding, the migratory bird that yearned for other climes. There were the times when he sulked long days by the fire, and the springs and autumns when he played an unending round of hookey. There were the days when he was sent home from school in disgrace; when protesting notes, and sometimes even teacher, arrived. “It’s not that Nat’s a bad boy, Mrs. Haynes,” he remembered one teacher saying; “but he’s so active, so full of restless animal spirits. How are we ever going to tame him?”