A dull depression settled on Luke's heart. It was all up with the Hayneses now. They had saved Paw from charity with their home-made burial; but what had it availed? They might as well have gone the whole figure. Everybody knew! There wasn't any comeback for a thing like this. They were just nobodies--the social pariahs of the district. IV Somehow, after the fashion of other years, they got their meager crops in--turnips, potatoes and Hubbard squashes put up in the vegetable cellar; oats cradled; corn husked; the buckwheat ready for the mill; even Tom's crooked furrows for the spring sowings made. Somehow, Maw helping like a man and Tom obeying like a docile child, they took toll of their summer. And suddenly September was at their heels--and then the equinox. It seemed to Luke that it had never rained so much before. Brown vapor rose eternally from the valley flats; the hilltops lay lost entirely in clotted murk. By periods hard rains, like showers of steel darts, beat on the soaking earth. Gypsy gales of wind went ricocheting among the farm buildings, setting the shingles to snapping and singing; the windows moaned and rattled. The sourest weather the boy could remember! And on the worst day of all they got the news. Out of the mail box in the lane Luke got it--going down under an old rubber cape in a steady blinding pour. It got all damp--the letter, foreign postmark, stamp and all--by the time he put it into Maw's hand. It was a double letter--or so one judged, first opening it. There was another inside, complete, sealed, and addressed in Nat's hand; but one must read the paper inclosed with it first--that was obvious. It was just a strip, queer, official looking, with a few lines typed upon it and a black heading that sprang out at one strangely. They read it together--or tried to. At first they got no sense from it. Paris--from clear off in France--and then the words below--and Maw's name at the top, just like the address on the newspaper: MRS. JERE HAYNES, Stony Brook, New York. It was for Maw all right. Then quite suddenly the words came clear through the blur: MRS. JERE HAYNES, Stony Brook, New York. _Dear Madam_: We regret to inform you that the official _communique_ for September sixth contains the tidings that the writer of the enclosed letter, Nathaniel Haynes, of Stony Brook, New York, U. S. A., was killed while on duty as an ambulance driver in the Sector of Verdun, and has been buried in that region. Further details will follow. The American Ambulance, Paris. Even when she realized, Maw never cried out. She sat wetting her lips oddly, looking at the words that had come like evil birds across the wide spaces of earth. It was Luke who remembered the other letter: "_My dear kind folks--Father, Mother and Brothers_: I guess I dare call you that when I get far enough away from you. Perhaps you won't mind when I tell you my news.