n, looking down at his
thin gray hands on the worn coverlet; "I calc'lated they'd hold off till
harvest, if the crop was comin' on all right." He glanced up at her
anxiously.

The woman's careworn face worked in a cruel convulsive effort at
self-control.

"It ain't right, Robert!" she broke out fiercely. "You've paid more'n
the place is worth now; if they take it for what's back, it ain't
right!"

Her husband looked at her with pleading in his sunken eyes. He felt
himself too weak for principles, hardly strong enough to cope with
facts.

"But they ain't to blame," he urged; "they lent me the money to pay
Thomson. It was straight cash; I guess it's all right."

"There's wrong somewhere," persisted the woman, hurling her abstract
justice recklessly in the face of the evidence. "If the place is worth
more, you've made it so workin' when you wasn't able. If they take it
now, I'll feel like burnin' down the house and choppin' out every tree
you've planted!"

The man turned wearily on his pillow. His wife could see the gaunt lines
of his unshaven neck. She put her hand to her aching throat and looked
at him helplessly; then she turned and went back to the door. The barley
_was_ turning yellow. She looked toward the little grave on the edge of
the field. More than the place was worth, she had said. What was it
worth? Suppose they should take it. She drew her high shoulders forward
and shivered in the warm air. The anger in her hard-featured face
wrought itself into fixed lines. She recrossed the room, and sat down on
the edge of the bed.

"How much is the mortgage, Robert?" she asked calmly. The sick man gave
a sighing breath of relief, and drew a worn account-book from under his
pillow.

"It'll be $287.65, interest an' all, when it's due," he said, consulting
his cramped figures. Each knew the amount perfectly well, but the feint
of asking and telling eased them both.

"I'm going down to San Diego to see them about it," said Nancy; "I can't
explain things in writing. There's the money for the children's shoes;
if the rains hold off, they can go barefoot till Christmas. Mother can
keep Lizzie out of school, and I guess Bobbie and Frank can 'tend to
things outside."

A four-year-old boy came around the house wailing out a grief that
seemed to abate suddenly at sight of his mother. Nancy picked him up and
held him in her lap while she took a splinter from the tip of his little
grimy outstretched finger; then she h