ched it--the doctor tuk it off."

"His right hand!" cried Ike, appalled.

The blacksmith would never lift a hammer again. And there the forge
stood, silent and smokeless.

What this portended, Ike realized as he sat with them around the fire.
Their sterile fields in Poor Valley had only served to eke out their
subsistence. This year the corn-crop had failed, and the wheat was
hardly better. The winter had found them without special provision, but
without special anxiety, for the anvil had always amply supplied their
simple needs.

Now that this misfortune had befallen them, who could say what was
before them unless Ike would remain and take his stepfather's place at
the forge? Ike knew that this contingency must have occurred to them as
well as to him. He divined it from the anxious, furtive glances which
they one and all cast upon him from time to time,--even Pearce Tallam,
whose turn it was now to feel that greatest anguish of calamity,
helplessness.

But must he relinquish his hopes, his chance of an education, that
plucky race for which he was entered to overtake the world that had a
hundred years the start of him, and be forever a nameless, futureless
clod in Poor Valley?

His mother had the son she had chosen. And surely he owed no duty to
Pearce Tallam. The hand that was gone had been a hard hand to him.

He rose at length. He put on his leather apron. "Waal--I mought ez well
g' long ter the shop, I reckon," he remarked calmly. "'Pears like thar's
time yit fur a toler'ble spot o' work afore dark."

It was a hard-won victory. Even then he experienced a sort of
satisfaction in knowing that Pearce Tallam must feel humiliated and of
small account to be thus utterly dependent for his bread upon the boy
whom he had so persistently maltreated. In his pale face Ike saw
something of the bitterness he had endured, of his broken spirit, of his
humbled pride.

The look smote upon the boy's heart. There was another inward struggle.
Then he said, as if it were a result of deep cogitation,--

"Ye'll hev ter kem over ter the shop, dad, wunst in a while, ter advise
'bout what's doin'. 'Pears ter me like mos' folks would 'low ez a boy
no older 'n me couldn't do reg'lar blacksmithin' 'thout some sperienced
body along fur sense an' showin'."

The man visibly plucked up a little. Was he, indeed, so useless? "That's
a fac', Ike," he said gently. "I reckon ye kin make out
toler'ble--cornsiderin'. But I'll be along ter hol