"And this is what I have left after twenty years of hard work," said Mr. Crosby sadly when the auction was over and he had received the few hundred dollars. CHAPTER XXV THE WELCOME LETTER--CONCLUSION "Well, what are we going to do now?" asked Mrs. Crosby as a little later she, with her husband and daughter, sat in their desolate home. "We've got to do something," replied Mr. Crosby. "I've got to make a new start, I suppose, and it comes hard at my time of life." "Let me help, daddy," said Nettie, putting her arm around her father's neck. "I heard of a good place in the woolen mill. I can earn four dollars a week." "Not while I have health and strength," replied Mr. Crosby. "We'll manage to make out somehow," he added more cheerfully, for now that the worst had happened, he was ready to face anything. "The boys ought to know about this," said Mrs. Crosby. "Maybe they have found a gold mine and can help us." "Not much chance of that," responded her husband. "But I would like to hear from them. We haven't had a letter since they got to the mountains, and the last time they wrote they were about to start for Dizzy Gulch. We can't expect any help from them, but perhaps they will want to come back, now that we have lost our farm. Probably we three can get work on some place--enough to earn a living, anyhow." "It will seem strange to be working for some one else, when you have had your own farm so many years," said Mrs. Crosby. "A man's farm isn't very much his when there's a mortgage on it. Never again will I try to live under such conditions. Why, I feel almost happy, now that I know there is no interest to meet. We will go somewhere else and begin life over again." "Yes, and we've got to go somewhere to-night," added Nettie with a laugh, the first real one since their misfortune. "We have no beds here--nearly everything was sold. What are we going to do, daddy--sleep in the barn, in the hay? Do you suppose the sheriff would let us?" "No need for that," replied her father. "We'll go to the hotel to-night. In the morning I will consider matters, and decide what is best to do. But I think I'll write a letter to the boys and tell them the bad news as gently as possible. Have you their address, Nettie?" "Yes, father, but I imagine they must be in the mountains now." "Well, mail will probably be forwarded. I'll ask them if they made out any worse with their gold hunting than I did with my farming." But though he made light of it, Mr. Crosby was a man broken in spirit. Through no fault of his own he found himself, in the decline of life, with hardly enough to live on half a year, and no prospects of anything better. Still he did not despair. The little family went to the village hotel that evening. Many of their neighbors, who sympathized with them, invited them to share their homes, but Mr. Crosby thought it would be less embarrassing for his wife and daughter if they went to the hotel.