“Tell the truth,” he laughed, “I’m stony broke. ’Tisn’t mine, all this stuff you see. I got some kale in advance—not much, but enough to swing me; but of course, the outfit’s the company’s. But I’ll tell you one thing: I’m going to bring some long green home with me, you can bet! And when I do”—Nat had given Maw a prodigious nudge in the ribs—“when I do—I ain’t goin’ to stay an old bachelor forever! Do you get that?” Maw’s smile had faded for a moment. But the presents were fine—a new knife for Tom, a book for Luke, and twenty whole round dollars for Maw, enough to pay that old grocery bill down at Beckonridge’s and Paw’s new invoice of patent medicine. They all stood on the porch and watched him as far as they could see; and Maw’s black mood didn’t return for a whole week. Evenings now they had something different to talk about—journeys in seagoing craft; foreign countries and the progress of the “Ee-ropean” war, and Nat’s likelihood—he had laughed at this—of touching even its fringe. They worked it all up from the boiler-plate war news in the _Biweekly_ and Luke’s school geography. Yes; for a little space the blackness was lifted. Then came the August morning when Paw died. This was an unexpected and unsettling contingency. One doesn’t look for a “chronic’s” doing anything so unscheduled and foreign to routine; but Paw spoiled all precedent. They found him that morning with his heart quite still, and Luke knew they stood in the presence of imminent tragedy. It’s all very well to peck along, hand-to-mouth fashion. You can manage a living of sorts; and farm produce, even scanty, unskillfully contrived, and the charity of relatives, and the patience of tradesmen, will see you through. But a funeral—that’s different! Undertaker—that means money. Was it possible that the sordid epic of their lives must be capped by the crowning insult, the Poormaster and the Pauper’s Field? If only poor Paw could have waited a little before he claimed the spotlight—until prices fell a little or Nat got back with that “long green”! Maw swallowed her bitter pill. She went to see Uncle Clem and ask! And Uncle Clem was kind. “He’ll buy a casket—he’s willin’ fur that—an’ send a wreath and pay fur notices, an’ even half on a buryin’ lot; but he said he couldn’t do no more. The high cost has hit him too.... An’ where are we to git the rest? He said—at the last—it might be better all round fur us to take what Ellick Flick would gimme outen the Poor Fund—” Maw hadn’t been able to go on for a spell. A pauper’s burial for Paw! Surely Maw would manage better than that! She tried to find a better way that very night.