ather came from the stable, slipped out to where
he was washing for supper and whispered about the flax, asking him not to
mention it while her mother was suffering with the headache.

The news was not news to Josiah Farnshaw, who had examined the field
anxiously as he had returned from Hansen's. Sobered by the loss, he was
less disagreeable than usual and only pushed his daughter out of his way
as he reached around her for the sun-cracked bar of yellow laundry soap
with which to wash his hands. Thankful to have the unpleasant but
important matter, as she thought, safely attended to, the child returned
to help lift the meal to the bare kitchen table.

The illy lighted room, with its one small window, was dim and dismal in
the dusk of evening. In spite of the added heat it would produce, the
child decided that a light was necessary.

After the kerosene lamp was lighted, she turned to see if her mother
needed her help again. The crooked blaze ran up unexpectedly and blacked
the cracked chimney on one side with a soot so thick that one half of the
room was soon in semi-darkness. Mrs. Farnshaw took it fretfully in hand.

"Why can't you trim it when you see it runnin' up that way?" she demanded
querulously, poking at the lopsided and deeply charred wick with a sliver
obtained from the side of the wood-box.

Her ministrations were not very successful, however, for when the chimney
was replaced it ran up on the other side, and in the end her daughter had
to prosecute a search for the scissors and cut the wick properly. As they
worked over the ill-smelling light, Albert, the youngest of the three
children of the household, burst into the kitchen crying excitedly:

"Ma, did you know that th' flax was all whipped out of th' pods on to the
ground?"

Mrs. Farnshaw, who had received the lamp from her daughter's hand, let it
fall on the edge of an upturned plate in her excitement, and then, seeing
what she had done, fumbled blindly in a terrified effort to right it
before it should go over. The cracked chimney fell from its moorings, and,
striking a teacup, spattered broken glass over the table like hailstones.
The entire family scrambled to save the lamp itself from a similar fate
and were plunged into darkness by the girl blowing out its flame to save
an explosion.

The excitement of the moment served, temporarily, to lessen the blow of
Albert's announcement, but by the time "a dip" had been constructed the
full weight of t