n't
help such things. You'd better follow on to Johnsonville now and not
embitter the last of your life with a hopeless struggle."

Miss Abigail fairly shouted at him her repudiation of his ideas. "Not
while there is a breath in me! My folks were all soldiers."

"But even soldiers surrender to overpowering forces."

"Hoo! Hoo! How do they know they're overpowering till they're overpowered!
How do they dare surrender till they're dead! How do they know that if
they hold out just a little longer they won't get reenforcements!"

Mr. Horton was a little impatient of his old friend's unreason. "My dear
Miss Abigail, you have brains. _Use_ them! What possible reinforcements
can you expect?"

The old woman opposed to his arguments nothing but a passionately bare
denial. "No! No! No! We're different! It's in your blood to give up
because you can reason it all out that you're beaten," She stood up,
shaking with her vehemence. "It's in my blood to fight and fight and
fight--"

"And then what?" asked the sculptor, as she hesitated.

"Go on fighting!" she cried.

III

She was seventy-one years old when she first flew this flag, and for the
next four years she battled unceasingly under its bold motto against odds
that rapidly grew more overwhelming as the process that had been
imperceptibly draining Greenford of its population gained impetus with it
own action. In the beginning people moved to Johnsonville because they
could get work in the print mill, but after a time they went because the
others had gone. Before long there was no cobbler in Greenford because
there was so little cobbling to do. After that the butcher went away, then
the carpenter, and finally the grocery-store was shut up and deserted by
the man whose father and grandfather had kept store in the same building
for sixty years. It was the old story. He had a large family of children
who needed education and "a chance."

The well-kept old village still preserved its outer shell of quaintness
and had a constantly increasing charm for summering strangers who rejoiced
with a shameless egoism in the death-like quiet of the moribund place, and
pointed out to visiting friends from the city the tufts of grass beginning
to grow in the main street as delightful proofs of the tranquillity of
their summer retreat.

Miss Abigail overheard a conversation to this effect one day between some
self-invited visitors to her wonderful garden. Her heart burned and her