smile, only half reassured. To her the shut-down seemed like
the end of the world.

Some of the French people took time by the forelock and boarded the
midnight train that very Saturday with all their possessions. A little
later two or three families departed by the same train, under cover of
the darkness between two days, without stopping to pay even their
house rent. These mysterious flittings, like that of the famous Tartar
tribe, roused a suspicion against their fellow countrymen, but after a
succession of such departures almost everybody else thought it far
cheaper to stay among friends. It seemed as if at any moment the great
mill wheels might begin to turn, and the bell begin to ring, but day
after day the little town was still and the bell tolled the hours one
after another as if it were Sunday. The mild spring weather came on
and the women sat mending or knitting on the doorsteps. More people
moved away; there were but few men and girls left now in the quiet
boarding-houses, and the spare tables were stacked one upon another at
the end of the rooms. When planting-time came, word was passed about
the Corporation that the agent was going to portion out a field that
belonged to him a little way out of town on the South road, and let
every man who had a family take a good-sized piece to plant. He also
offered seed potatoes and garden seeds free to anyone who would come
and ask for them at his house. The poor are very generous to each
other, as a rule, and there was much borrowing and lending from house
to house, and it was wonderful how long the people seemed to continue
their usual fashions of life without distress. Almost everybody had
saved a little bit of money and some had saved more; if one could no
longer buy beefsteak he could still buy flour and potatoes, and a bit
of pork lent a pleasing flavor, to content an idle man who had nothing
to do but to stroll about town.

V.

One night the agent was sitting alone in his large, half-furnished
house. Mary Moynahan, his housekeeper, had gone up to the church.
There was a timid knock at the door.

There were two persons waiting, a short, thick-set man and a pale
woman with dark, bright eyes who was nearly a head taller than her
companion.

"Come in, Ellen; I'm glad to see you," said the agent. "Have you got
your wheel-barrow, Mike?" Almost all the would-be planters of the
field had come under cover of darkness and contrived if possible to
avoid each oth