Josiah Farnshaw moved steadily ahead with his planting. He announced that he had faith in Kansas--had always had--he'd stand on the burning deck! While others hesitated, he took advantage of wind and weather to get his crops in the ground. He had been right all along. He did not propose "to be run off of the land he had homesteaded and set with trees by any durned little bugs he'd ever come across." It was necessary to be up and doing if a man was going to provide for a family. Now this assertion proved to be true, for the agent of the harvester company visited him and requested payment of the notes given the year before. The agent was gracious when the inability to pay was explained. He would renew the paper if it could be secured by the land. There was no hurry about payment, but it was necessary for the details to be finished up in a business-like manner. The thing looked simple enough. It was a just debt and Mr. Farnshaw intended to pay it. He'd as soon it was secured by the land as any other way. The details were soon arranged. Mr. Farnshaw agreed to meet the agent in Colebyville, the nearest town, the next day, and have the papers made out. After the agent was gone Mr. Farnshaw went to the house to inform his wife that she was to go to town and attach her name to the document. The storm of protest was expected, and when Mrs. Farnshaw broke out with: "Now, pa, you ain't never goin' t' mortgage th' farm, are you?" he answered surlily: "Yes, I be, an' I don't want no words about it neither," and walked determinedly out of the house, leaving his wife to cry out her fears with her children. "We won't have where to lay our heads, soon," she announced bitterly. "I've seen somethin' of th' mortgage business an' I ain't never seen any of 'em free from payin' interest afterward." This was no mere personal quarrel. Her children distinguished that. This was real, definite trouble. Accustomed as the child was to her mother's woes, Lizzie Farnshaw was moved to unusual demonstrations by the quality of the outburst of tears which followed the words, and said impulsively: "Never you mind, ma, I'm going to teach school in another year, and I'll help pay the interest; and we'll get out of debt, too, somehow." Mrs. Farnshaw brightened. "I hadn't thought of that!" she said. "I'm glad you're willin' t' help out. I had thought maybe you'd get me one of them new nubies after you got some money of your own." She went into the other room to lay out the black dress, which death had sanctified some months before, for use on the morrow. The opportunity to wear the emblems of mourning turned her childish mind away from the object of her journey, and left her as unconscious as the young girl herself that the mortgage had extended from the land to the lives of herself and her husband, and that in that promise it had laid its withering hand on the future of her child as well.