which would have brought her competency once--if sold in the
right market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenly
thinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horse
which Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when it
was too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision,
that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till at
last she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in the
furrow, groaned under the whip--and died.

Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and she
held her breath to think harder upon it. She concluded at last, grimly,
that she didn't care--only for the children.

The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the low
mutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles a
little, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.

_Boom, boom, boom_, it broke nearer and nearer, as if a vast cordon of
cannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious only of
pleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrant
storm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then, in the cool,
sweet hush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deep
sleep.

III.

When she woke the younger children were playing about on the floor in
their night-clothes, and little Pet was sitting in a square of sunshine,
intent on one of his shoes. He was too young to know how poor and
squalid his surroundings were--the patch of sunshine flung on the floor
glorified it all. He--little animal--was happy.

The poor of the Western prairies lie almost as unhealthily close
together as do the poor of the city tenements. In the small hut of the
peasant there is as little chance to escape close and tainting contact
as in the coops and dens of the North End of proud Boston. In the midst
of oceans of land, floods of sunshine and gulfs of verdure, the farmer
lives in two or three small rooms. Poverty's eternal cordon is ever
round the poor.

"Ma, why didn't you sleep with Pap last night?" asked Bob, the
seven-year-old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dull
red.

"You hush, will yeh? Because--I--it was too warm--and there was a storm
comin'. You never mind askin' such questions. Is he gone out?"

"Yup. I heerd him callin' the pigs. It's Sunday, ain't it, ma?"

The fact seemed to startle her.

"Why, yes,