flowers should be in
those scrawny brown things; and," she added as she brushed away the
brown hair of her forties from her broad brow, "God probably thinks
the same thing when He considers men and their souls."

"And when the gardener puts us away for our winter's sleep?" Ward
asked.

She turned her big frank blue eyes upon him as she took the words from
his mouth, "'And the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.'" Then
she smiled sadly and said, "But it is the old Adam himself that I seem
to be wrestling with just now."

"In the children--at school?" asked the Wards, one after the other.
She sighed and looked at the little troopers straggling along the
highway, and replied, "Yes, partly that, too," and throwing her
unnecessary hood back, turned her face into the wind and walked
quickly away. The Wards watched her as she strode down the hill, and
finally as he bent to his work the general asked:--

"Lucy, what does she think of John?"

Mrs. Ward, who was busy with a geranium, did not reply at once. But in
a moment she rose and, putting the plant with some others that were to
go to the cellar, replied: "Oh, Phil--you know a mother tries to hope
against hope. She teaches her school every day, and keeps her mind
busy. But sometimes, when she stops in here after school or for lunch,
she can't help dropping things that let me know. I think her heart is
breaking, Phil."

"Does she know about the wheat deal--I mean about the way he has
made the farmers sign that mortgage by cutting them off from borrowing
money at the bank?"

"Not all of it--but I think she suspects," replied the wife.

"Did you know, dear," said the general, as he put the plants in the
barrow to wheel them to the cellar, "that I ran across something
to-day--it may be all suspicion, and I don't want to wrong
John--but Mart Culpepper, God bless his big innocent heart, let
something slip--well, it was John, I think, who arranged for that
loan of ten thousand from Brownwell to Mart. Though why he didn't get
it at the bank, I don't know. But John had some reason. Things look
mighty crooked there at the bank. I know this--Mart says that
Brownwell lent him the money, and Mart lent it to the bank for a month
there in August, while he was holding the Chicago fellow in the air."

Mrs. Ward sat down on the front steps of the porch, and exclaimed:--

"Well, Phil Ward--that's why the Culpeppers are so nice to Brownwell.
Honestly, Phil, the last time I was