im
to cum hif hi cant pi by septmbr but hi am trustin
God der polly e asn't forgot us. hi 'm glad the poppies
grew. ere's a disy hi am sendin yu hi can mike the
butonoles yet. hi do sum hevry di mrs purdy gave me
fourpence one di for sum i mide for her hi ad a cup
of tee that di. hi am appy thinkin of yu der polly.

"And Polly is dead!" burst from Mrs. Motherwell as something gathered
in her throat. She laid the letter down and looked straight ahead of
her.

The sloping walls of the little kitchen loft, with its cobwebbed beams
faded away, and she was looking into a squalid little room where an old
woman, bent and feeble, sat working buttonholes with trembling fingers.
Her eyes were restless and expectant; she listened eagerly to every
sound. A step is at the door, a hand is on the latch. The old woman
rises uncertainly, a great hope in her eyes--it is the letter--the
letter at last. The door opens, and the old woman falls cowering and
moaning, and wringing her hands before the man who enters. It is the
officer!

Mrs. Motherwell buried her face in her hands.

"Oh God be merciful, be merciful," she sobbed.

Sam Motherwell, knowing nothing of the storm that was passing through
his wife's mind, was out in the machine house tightening up the screws
and bolts in the binders, getting ready for the harvest. The barley was
whitening already.

The nurse's letter had disturbed him. He tried to laugh at himself--the
idea of his boxing up those weeds to send to anybody. Still the nurse
had said how pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will
please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying
horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight
of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he
was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning,
for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed
to see her yet, how she ran after the colt the day it broke out of the
pasture, and when the men were away she would hitch up a horse for him
as quick as anybody.

"I kind o' wish now that I had given her something--it would have
pleased her so--some little thing," he added hastily.

Mrs. Motherwell came across the yard bareheaded.

"Come into the house, Sam," she said gently. "I want to show you
something."

He looked up quickly, but saw something in his wife's face that
prevented him from speaking.

He follo