sewing, which was pinned to her dress at the knee. She had listened to his story, but she had not uttered a word, and her silence filled him with foreboding. Tom watched the flock of bedraggled and down-hearted chickens creeping about under the eaves of the porch to escape the rain, and wondered whether it would not be better to kill himself to get rid of himself. His mother fumbled long and irresolutely in the drawer, looking up to talk every now and then, mostly in order to delay as long as possible the painful parting with her savings. "I know you didn't mean no harm, Tommy; I know you didn't; but it's awful hard on Barb'ry an' me, partin' with this money. Dave Sovine's a wicked wretch to bring such trouble on two women like us, that's had such a hard time to git on, an' nobody left to work the place. Out uv six children, you an' Barb'ry's all that's left alive. It's hard on a woman to be left without her husband, an' all but the two youngest children dead." Here she stopped ransacking the drawer to wipe her eyes. She gave way to her grief the more easily because she still lacked resolution to devote her earnings to filling up the gap made by Tom's prodigality. And in every trouble her mind reverted involuntarily to the greater tribulations of her life; all rills of disappointment and all rivers of grief led down to this great sea of sorrow. "You're the only two't's left, you two. Ef you'd just keep out uv bad comp'ny, Tommy. But," she said, recovering herself, "I know you're feelin' awful bad, an' you're a good boy only you're so keerless an' ventersome. You didn't mean no harm, an' you won't do it no more, I know you won't." By this time Mrs. Grayson's trembling hands, on whose hardened palms and slightly distorted fingers one might have read the history of a lifetime of work and hardship, had drawn out a cotton handkerchief in which were tied up thirty great round cumbersome Spanish and Mexican dollars, with some smaller silver. This she took to a table, where she proceeded slowly to count out for Tom the exact amount he had borrowed to redeem his clothes,--not a fi'-penny bit more did she spare him. At this point Barbara began to speak. She raised her face from her work and drew her dark eyes to a sharp focus, as she always did when she was much in earnest. "It don't matter much about us, Tom," she said, despondently. "Women are made to give up for men, I suppose. I've made up my mind a'ready to quit the school over at Timber Creek, though I do hate to." "Yes," said her mother, "an' it's too bad, fer you did like that new-fangled study of algebray, though I can't see the good of it."