If at times Luke felt a stirring doubt that Nat was not acquitting himself of his family duty, he quenched it fiercely. Nat was different. He was born free; you could tell it in his talk, in his way of thinking. He was like an eagle and hated to be bound by earthly ties. He cared for them all in his own way. Times when he was back he helped Maw all he could. If he brought money he gave of it freely; if he had none, just the look of his eye or the ready jest on his lip helped. Upstairs in a drawer of the old pine bureau lay some of Nat's discarded clothing--incredible garments to Luke. The lame boy, going to them sometimes, fingered them, pondering, reconstructing for himself the fabric of Nat's adventures, his life. The ice-cream pants of a bygone day; the pointed, shriveled yellow Oxfords! the silk-front shirt; the odd cuff link or stud--they were like a genie-in-a-bottle, these poor clothes! You rubbed them and a whole Arabian Night's dream unfurled from them. And Nat lived it all! But people--dull stodgy people like Uncle Clem and Aunt Mollie, and old Beckonridge down at the store, and a dozen others--these criticized him for not "workin' reg'lar" and giving a full account of himself. Luke, thinking of all this, would flush with impotent anger. "Oh, let 'em talk, though! He'll show 'em some day! They dunno Nat. He'll do somethin' big fur us all some day." III Midsummer came to trim the old farm with her wreaths. It was the time Luke loved best of all--the long, sweet, loam-scented evenings with Maw and Tom on the old porch; and sometimes--when there was no fog--Paw's cot, wheeled out in the stillness. But Maw was not herself this summer. Something had fretted and eaten into her heart like an acid ever since Aunt Mollie's visit and the news of Matty Bisbee's funeral. When, one by one, the early summer festivities of the neighborhood had slipped by, with no inclusion of the Hayneses, she had fallen to brooding deeply,--to feeling more bitterly than ever the ignominy and wretchedness of their position. Luke tried to comfort her; to point out that this summer was like any other; that they "never had mattered much to folks." But Maw continued to brood; to allude vaguely and insistently to "the straw that broke the camel's back." It was bitter hard to have Maw like that--home was bad enough, anyway. Sometimes on clear, soft nights, when the moon came out all splendid and the "peepers" sang so plaintively in the Hollow, the boy's heart would fill and grow enormous in his chest with the intolerable sadness he felt. Then Maw's mood lifted--pierced by a ray of heavenly sunlight--for Nat came home!