e to his head. No,
'pap' didn't git that a-way often, and he'd be all right jes' as soon as
he slept it off a while." The old woman moved about with a cane and the
sympathetic Blight merely looked a question at her.

"Yes, she'd fell down a year ago--and had sort o' hurt herself--didn't
do nothin', though, 'cept break one hip," she added, in her kind,
patient old voice. Did many people stop there? Oh, yes, sometimes
fifteen at a time--they "never turned nobody away." And she had a big
family, little Cindy and the two big girls and Buck and Mart--who was
out somewhere--and the hired man, and yes--"Thar was another boy, but he
was fitified," said one of the big sisters.

"I beg your pardon," said the wondering Blight, but she knew that phrase
wouldn't do, so she added politely:

"What did you say?"

"Fitified--Tom has fits. He's in a asylum in the settlements."

"Tom come back once an' he was all right," said the old mother; "but he
worried so much over them gals workin' so hard that it plum' throwed him
off ag'in, and we had to send him back."

"Do you work pretty hard?" I asked presently. Then a story came that
was full of unconscious pathos, because there was no hint of
complaint--simply a plain statement of daily life. They got up before
the men, in order to get breakfast ready; then they went with the men
into the fields--those two girls--and worked like men. At dark they
got supper ready, and after the men went to bed they worked on--washing
dishes and clearing up the kitchen. They took it turn about getting
supper, and sometimes, one said, she was "so plumb tuckered out that
she'd drap on the bed and go to sleep ruther than eat her own supper."
No wonder poor Tom had to go back to the asylum. All the while the
two girls stood by the fire looking, politely but minutely, at the two
strange girls and their curious clothes and their boots, and the way
they dressed their hair. Their hard life seemed to have hurt them
none--for both were the pictures of health--whatever that phrase means.

After supper "pap" came in, perfectly sober, with a big ruddy face,
giant frame, and twinkling gray eyes. He was the man who had risen to
speak his faith in the Hon. Samuel Budd that day on the size of the Hon.
Samuel's ears. He, too, was unashamed and, as he explained his plight
again, he did it with little apology.

"I seed ye at the speakin' to-day. That man Budd is a good man. He done
somethin' fer a boy o' mine over at th