"Here, set this table for me; I'm clear done out. Did you ever hear of such a crazy thing as all them hoppers comin' down like bees? Your pa's gone over to Hansen's t' see what he thinks. Looks 's if we'd be harder up 'n ever, an' I thought I'd done 'bout all th' savin' a woman could do a'ready. I'm goin' t' get right off t' mother's soon's ever we can sell that flax. If I don't, we'll be havin' t' use th' money for feed." Her daughter made no reply. It was no time, when her mother was having one of her periodical sick-headaches, to let it be known that there was no flax to sell. That flax had been one long series of troublesome worries, to which the total loss was a fittingly tragic end. The restless grasshoppers outside were forgotten. Some weeks before, Mr. Farnshaw had given a grudging consent to the use of the proceeds from the flax crop for a trip' to his wife's old home while her mother yet lived. Josiah Farnshaw's temper was an uncertain quantity. Had Mrs. Farnshaw been wise she would have dropped all reference to the flax when the promise was obtained. But Mrs. Farnshaw had to talk; it was her fate. She had hovered about the field, she had centred her faculties on the considerations of harvesting, and prices. She laboriously and obviously collected eggs, skimped the family on its supply of butter, and had counted her chickens to see how many she could sacrifice for the purchase of "a decent bit of black." As she sewed upon the premature emblems of her coming woe, she had discussed the desirability of threshing out of the shock instead of waiting for the stack to go through the sweating process; she talked, talked, talked, with an endless clacking, till her husband fled from her presence or cut her short with an oath. He wished he had never planted flax, he wished he had never heard of it, he wished--he hardly knew what he did wish, but he was sick of flax. Crops of all sorts were shortened by continued drought; corn would be an utter failure. He had given notes for a new harvester and other machinery while the prospects for crops were good, and the knowledge that implement dealers would collect those notes whether the yield of grain was equal to their demands or not tightened the set lines about his naturally stern mouth and irritated a temper never good at the best. Daily he became more obstinate and unapproachable.