Having strained the milk and fed the children, she took some skimmed milk from the cans and started to feed the calves bawling strenuously behind the barn. The eager and unruly brutes pushed and struggled to get into the pails all at once, and in consequence spilt nearly all of the milk on the ground. This was the last trial,--the woman fell down on the damp grass and moaned and sobbed like a crazed thing. The children stood around like little partridges, looking at her in silence, till at last the little one began to wail. Then the mother rose wearily to her feet, and walked slowly back towards the house. She heard Burns threshing his team at the well, with the sound of oaths. He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to care. His poor, overworked team did not move quick enough for him, and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes gleamed from his dust-laid face. "Supper ready?" he growled. "Yes, two hours ago." "Well, I can't help it! That devilish corn is getting too tall to plow again, and I've got 'o go through it to-morrow or not at all. Cows milked?" "Part of 'em." "How many?" "Three." "Hell! Which three?" "Spot, and Brin, and Cherry." "_Of_ course! kept the three worst ones. I'll be damned if I milk 'm to-night. I don't see why you play out jest the nights I need ye most--" here he kicked a child out of the way. "Git out 'o that! Haint ye got no sense? I'll learn ye--" "Stop that, Sim Burns!" cried the woman, snatching up the child. "You're a reg'lar ol' hyeny,--that's what you are--" she added defiantly, roused at last from her lethargy. "You're a--beauty, that's what _you_ are," he said, pitilessly. "Keep your brats out f'um under my feet;" and he strode off to the barn after his team, leaving her with a fierce hate in her heart. She heard him yelling at his team in their stalls. The children had had their supper so she took them to bed. She was unusually tender to them for she wanted to make up in some way for her harshness. The ferocity of her husband had shown up her own petulant temper hideously, and she sat and sobbed in the darkness a long time beside the cradle where the little Pet slept. She heard Burns come growling in and tramp about,--the supper was on the table, he could wait on himself. There was an awful feeling at her heart as she sat there and the house grew quiet. She thought of suicide in a vague way; of somehow taking her children in her arms and sinking into a lake somewhere, where she would never more be troubled, where she could sleep forever, without toil or hunger.