Steve returned from town the evening following Nannie's outburst with a mind heavy laden. That had been his mental condition, indeed, much of the time since he turned farmer, and I may add that his thoughts occasionally ran in a sarcastic vein--a course ordinarily foreign to him. Shortly before that crucial point in his career, his marriage to Nannie, Randolph Chance had loaned him a beautiful idyl, termed "Liberty and a Living." Randolph himself had read this as a thirsty man reads of cool, rock-paved brooks; Steve read it as a poet, a dreamer, but it would no doubt have had a marked effect upon his character had he not closely followed it up with Charles Dudley Warner's "Summer in a Garden," much as one would chase a poison with its antidote, only in this case the order was reversed, the latter resembling the poison, since it awoke in his mind gloomy forebodings and inspired satirical reflections upon the universal mother. Tuned to this key, he was no doubt ill-prepared, while turning the clod, to receive into his soul the sweet influences of rural life, and by reason of their elevating beauty, to be fortified against those drawbacks and trials with which all paths abound. Truth to tell, Steve was discouraged. He had begun to realize that he had on his hands not only a small farm, for the tillage of which he was ill-contrived, but a large child as well, whose rearing and developing---- Just here he came to a sudden halt in his thought, and an odd word leaped in: "Cooking!" Then the name of that newspaper clipping of which Randolph once told him-- "How to Cook Wives." "Well, how in thunder?" he asked himself, and walked homeward from the station. Ere he arrived he saw Nannie at the door. She was screaming something which, on his approach, he found to be-- "Sarah Maria is lost!" Had Steve said "thank Heaven!" he would merely have been speaking out of the fullness of his heart. Instead of that, he wheeled like an automaton and retraced his steps. He knew where to look for her. There she was, as usual, down near the track, and as Steve approached she stepped squarely on, and with a set gaze awaited the speedy coming of the city-bound train. Of course she knew it would kill her, but like Samson of old she would have the satisfaction of taking a few acquaintances with her. Steve dragged her off and managed to get her home, and thus for the present prevented the sin of self-destruction.