. I guess mebbe it's been six
weeks I ain't seen him. Las' time he was here he wrote that letter.
He ain't come no more. You let me drag this couch up to the fire, and
you lay down and rest yo'self. I'll put on more wood. Seems like this
is awful cold winter. We had six little pigs come, and four of 'em
froze. John, he brung 'em in by the fire, but it's no good; they die,
anyway."

Billy Louise dropped apathetically upon the couch after Phoebe had
helped her pull off her coat. She did not feel as though anything
mattered much, but she must go on with life, no matter how purposeless
it seemed. To live awhile and work and struggle and know the pain of
disappointment and weariness, and then to die: she did not see what use
there was in struggling. But one had to go on just the same. She had
borrowed money for mommie's sickness, and she would have to repay it;
and it was all so purposeless!

"How are the cattle wintering?" She forced herself to make some show
of interest in things.

"The cattle, they're doing all right. One heifer, she got blackleg and
die, but the rest they're all right. John, he couldn't find all; two
or three, they're gone. He says mebby them rustlers got 'em. He
looked good as he could."

"Are--has there been any more trouble about losing stock?" Billy
Louise shut her hand into a fist, but she spoke in the same tired tone
as before.

"I dunno. Seabeck, he told John they don't catch nobody yet. That
inspector, he come by long time ago. I guess he stopped with Seabeck.
He ain't come back yet. I dunno where he's gone. Seabeck, he didn't
say nothing to John about him, I guess. Maybe he went out the other
way."

"I--did you do what I told you, Phoebe, about--mommie's things?"

For once Phoebe did not answer garrulously. "Yes, I done it," she said
softly. "The boxes is in the shed when you want 'em."

"All right, Phoebe. Is the tea ready?"

While she sipped creamy tea from a solid-silver teaspoon which had been
a part of mommie's wedding-set, Billy Louise looked around the familiar
room for which she had hungered so in those deadly, monotonous weeks at
the hospital. The fire snapped in its stone recess, and the cheerful
warmth of it comforted her body and in a measure soothed her spirit.
She was chilled to the bones with facing that bitter east wind for
hours, and she had not seen a fireplace in all the time she had been
away.

But the place was empty, with no mommie f