"I have made up my mind to quit," he returned. "I have been staying in the country so much of late that I cannot do without it. I intend to sell my interests here, and settle down on my plantation." "You will be wise," she said, philosophically. "Life is too short to live any other way than as close as possible to nature. All this"--she glanced up the busy street--"is madness--sheer madness. In the whole squirming human mass you could not show me one really contented person, while I can point to hundreds in the mountains. You are thinking about leaving it while my father is planning to come here. At his time of life, too. It is absurd, but he says it is the only thing open to him. I didn't tell you, but he came down with me. It is pitiful, for he is looking for work." "Oh, really, is it possible?" Saunders exclaimed, in surprise. "Why, I thought he was one man who would always stay in the country." Dolly sighed. "He has changed remarkably," she said, her face settling into almost pained gravity. "All at once he has become more ashamed of his condition than he ever was in his life. He is in debt to personal friends and has no way of paying them. He used to make money moonshining, but he has quit that, and doesn't seem able to make our poor farm pay at all. The storekeepers won't credit him, and he has become desperate. He is trying to get a job at carpenter work, but he will fail, for he can't do that sort of thing. Indirectly, George is the cause of his sudden determination." "George? Why, I thought--" "It is this way," Dolly went on, quickly. "You see, through your kindness George is so happy, is doing so well, and there is so much talk about his good luck that it has made my father realize his own shortcomings more keenly. Don't you bother; it is a good lesson for him; he has not been doing right, and he knows it. It is odd, isn't it, to see a man mortified by the success of his own son? In one way I am sorry for father, and in another I am not. Ann is trying to get a teacher's place in a school, and if she does, between us we may be able, for mother's sake, to keep father at home. Somehow, it makes me sad to think of his being in this hot town tramping about asking for work as a day-laborer, and yet I know it will be good for him. Mother cried pitifully when we left this morning, and he was the most wretched-looking man I ever saw. I don't care if he does suffer--_some_--but I don't like to see my mother sad. Do you know, that poor woman has had nothing but sorrow as her portion all her married life? First one thing and then another has come up to depress and dishearten her. At first it was father's drinking; then he quit that, and became a moonshiner in constant danger of arrest; and now he has left home to try his fortune among total strangers."