During this talk Jane Hemingway had gone out to the fence to speak to Dr. Evans, who had passed along the road, a side of bacon on his left shoulder, and she came back, and with a low groan sat down. Sam Hemingway, who sat near the fire, shrugged his shoulders and sniffed. "You are making too much of a hullabaloo over it," he said. "I've been thinking about the matter a lots, and I've come to the final conclusion that you are going it entirely too heavy, considering the balance of us. Every man, woman, and child, born and unborn, is predestinated to die, and them that meet their fate graceful-like are the right sort. Seeing you takin' on after them doctors left actually turned me sick at the stomach, and that ain't right. I'll be sick enough when my own time comes, I reckon, without having to go through separate spells for all my kin by marriage every time they have a little eruption break out on them. Then here's Virginia having her bright young life blighted when it ought to be all sunshine and roses, if I may be allowed to quote the poets. I'll bet when you was a young girl your cheeks wasn't kept wet as a dish-rag by a complaining mother. No, what you've got to do, Sister Jane, is to pucker up courage and face the music—be resigned."

"Resigned! I say, resigned!" was the rebellious reply—"I say, resigned! with a slow thing like this eating away at my vitals and nothing under high heaven to make it let go. You can talk, sitting there with a pipe in your mouth, and every limb sound, and a long life ahead of you."

"But you are openly disobeying Biblical injunction," said Sam, knocking his exhausted pipe on the heel of his shoe. "You are kicking agin the pricks. All of us have to die, and you are raising a racket because your turn is somewhere in sight. You are kicking agin something that's as natural as a child coming into the world. Besides, you are going back on what you preach. You are eternally telling folks there's a life in front of us that beats this one all hollow, and, now that Providence has really blessed you by giving you a chance to sorter peep ahead at the pearly gates, you are actually balking worse than a mean mule. I say you ought to give me and Virginia a rest. If you can't possibly raise the scads to pay for having the thing cut out, then pucker up and grin and bear it. Folks will think a sight more of you. Being a baby at both ends of life is foolish—there ain't nobody willing to do the nursing the second time."

"I want you to hush all that drivel, Sam," the widow retorted. "I reckon folks are different. Some are born with a natural dread of death, and it was always in my family. I stood over my mother and watched her breathe her last, and it went awfully hard with her. She begged and begged for somebody to save her, even sitting up in bed while all the neighbors were crouched about crying and praying, and yelled out to them to stop that and do something. We'd called in every doctor for forty miles about, and she had somehow heard of a young one away off, and she was calling out his name when she fell back and died."

"Well, she must have had some load on her mind that she wasn't ready to dump at the throne," said Sam, without a hint of humor in his drawling voice. "I've always understood your folks, in the woman line at least, was unforgiving. They say forgiveness is the softest pillow to expire on. I dunno, I've never tried it."

"I'm miserable, simply miserable!" groaned Jane. "Dr. Evans has just been to Darley. He promised to see if any of my old friends would lend me the money, but he says nobody had a cent to spare."

"Folks never have cash for an investment of that sort," answered Sam. "I fetched up your case to old Milward Dedham at the store the other day. He'd just sold five thousand acres of wild mountain land to a Boston man for the timber that was on it, and was puffed up powerful. I thought if ever a man would be prepared to help a friend he would. 'La me, Sam,' said he, 'you are wasting time trying to keep a woman from pegging out when wheat's off ten cents a bushel. Any woman ought to be happy lying in a grave that is paid for sech times as these.'"

The widow was really not listening to Sam's talk. With her bony elbows on her knee, her hand intuitively resting on the painless and yet insistent seat of her trouble, she rocked back and forth, sighing and moaning. There was a clicking of the gate-latch, a step on the gravelled walk, and Virginia, flushed from exercise in the cool air, came in and emptied her apron in the chimney corner, from which her uncle lazily dragged his feet. He leaned forward and critically scanned the heap of wood.

"You've got some good, rich, kindling pine there, Virginia," he drawled out. "But you needn't bother after to-day, though. I'll have my wagon back from the shop to-morrow, and Simpson has promised to lend me his yoke of oxen, and let me haul some logs from his hill. Most of it is good, seasoned red oak, and when it gets started to burning it pops like a pack of fire-crackers."

Virginia said nothing. Save for the firelight, which was a red glow from live coals, rather than any sort of flame, the big room was dark, and her mother took no notice of her, but Sam had his eyes on her over his left shoulder.

"Your mother has been keeping up the same old song and dance," he said, dryly; "so much so that she's clean forgot living folks want to eat at stated times. I reckon you'll have to make the bread and fry what bacon is left on that strip of skin."

Virginia said nothing to him, for her glance was steadily resting on her mother's despondent form. "Mother," she said, in a faltering, almost frightened tone, for she had been accustomed to no sort of deception in her life, and the part she was to play was a most repellent one—"mother, I've got something to tell you, and I hardly know how to do it. Down the road just a while ago I met a friend—a person who told me—the person told me—"

"Well, what did the person tell you?" Sam asked, as both he and the bowed wreck at the fire stared through the red glow.

"The person wants to help you out of trouble, mother, and gave me the hundred dollars you need. Before I got it I had to give my sacred word of honor that I'd never let even you know who sent it. I hardly knew what to do, but I thought perhaps I ought to—"

"What? You mean—oh, Virginia, you don't mean—" Jane began, as she rose stiffly, her scrawny hand on the mantel-piece, and took a step towards her almost shrinking daughter.

"Here's the money, mother," Virginia said, holding out the roll of bills, now damp and packed close together by her warm, tense fingers. "That's all I am allowed to tell you. I had to promise not to let you know who sent it."

As if electrified from death to life, Jane Hemingway sprang forward and took the money into her quivering fingers. "A light, Sam!" she cried. "Make a light, and let me see. If the child's plumb crazy I want to know it, and have it over with. Oh, my Lord! Don't fool me, Virginia. Don't raise my hopes with any trick anybody wants to play."

With far more activity than was his by birth, Sam stood up, secured a tallow candle from the mantel-piece, and bent over the coals.

"Crazy?" he said. "I know the girl's crazy, if she says there's any human being left on the earth after Noah's flood who gives away money without taking a receipt for it—to say nothing of a double, iron-clad mortgage."

"It looks and feels like money!" panted the widow. "Hurry up with the light. I wonder if my prayer has been heard at last."

"Hearing it and answering are two different things; the whole neighborhood has heard it often enough," growled Sam, as he fumed impatiently over the hot coals, fairly hidden in a stifling cloud of tallow-smoke.

"Here's a match," said Virginia, who had found one near the clock, and she struck it on the top of one of the dog-irons, and applied it to the dripping wick. At the same instant the hot tallow in the coals and ashes burst into flame, lighting up every corner and crevice of the great, ill-furnished room. Sam, holding the candle, bent over Jane's hands as they nervously fumbled the money.

"Ten-dollar bills!" she cried. "Oh, count 'em, Sam! I can't. They stick together, she's wadded 'em so tight."

With almost painful deliberation Sam counted the money, licking his rough thumb as he raised each bill.

"It's a hundred dollars all right enough," he said, turning the roll over to his sister-in-law. "The only thing that's worrying me is who's had sech a sudden enlargement of the heart in this section."

"Virginia, who gave you this money?" Mrs. Hemingway asked, her face abeam, her eyes gleaming with joy.

"I told you I was bound by a promise not to tell you or anybody else," Virginia awkwardly replied, as she avoided their combined stare.

"Oh, I smell a great big dead rat under the barn!" Sam laughed. "I'd bet my Sunday-go-to-meeting hat I know who sent it."

"You do?" exclaimed the widow. "Who do you think it was, Sam?"

"Why, the only chap around about here that seems to have wads of cash to throw at cats," Sam laughed. "He pitched one solid roll amounting to ten thousand at his starving family awhile back. Of course, he did this, too. He always did have a hankering for Virginia, anyway. Hain't I seen them two—"

"He didn't send it!" Virginia said, impulsively. "There! I didn't intend to set you guessing, and after this I'll never answer one way or the other. I didn't know whether I ought to take it on those conditions or not, but I couldn't see mother suffering when this would help her so much."

"No, God knows I'm glad you took it," said Jane, slowly, "even if I'm never to know. I'm sure it was a friend, for nobody but a friend would care that much to help me out of trouble."

"You bet it was a friend," said Sam, "unless it was some thief trying to get rid of some marked bills he's hooked some'r's. Now, Virginia, for the love of the Lord, get something ready to eat. For a family with a hundred dollars in hand, we are the nighest starvation of any I ever heard of."

While the girl was busy preparing the cornmeal dough in a wooden bread-tray, her mother walked about excitedly.

"I'll go to Darley in the hack in the morning," she said, "and right on to Atlanta on the evening train. I feel better already. Dr. Evans says I won't suffer a particle of pain, and will come back weighing more and with a better appetite."

"Well, I believe I'd not put myself out to improve on mine," said Sam, "unless this person who is so flush with boodle wants to keep up the good work. Dern if I don't believe I'll grow me a cancer, and talk about it till folks pay me to hush."