eve you're goin' crazy!"

"I shouldn't wonder if I was. I've had enough t' drive an Indian
crazy. Now you jest go off an' leave me 'lone. I aint in mind to
visit--they aint no way out of it, an' I'm tired o' tryin' to _find_ a
way. Go off an' let me be."

Her tone was so bitterly hopeless that the great jolly face of Mrs.
Council stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not worn for
years. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting.
Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbird
chattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar-tip. Both women felt
all this peace and beauty of the morning, dimly, and it disturbed Mrs.
Council because the other was so impassive under it all. At last,
after a long and thoughtful pause, Mrs. Council asked a question whose
answer she knew would decide it all,--asked it very kindly and
softly,--

"Creeshy, are you comin' in?"

"No," was the short and sullenly decisive answer. Mrs. Council knew
that was the end, and so rose with a sigh and went away.

"Wal, good by," she said simply.

Looking back she saw Lucretia lying at length with closed eyes and
hollow cheeks. She seemed to be sleeping, half-buried in the grass.
She did not look up nor reply to her sister-in-law. Her life also was
one of toil and trouble, but not so hard and hapless as Lucretia's.
By contrast with most of her neighbors she seemed comfortable.

"Sim Burns, what you ben doin' to that woman?" she burst out as she
waddled up to where the two men were sitting under a cotton-wood tree,
talking and whittling after the manner of farmers.

"Nawthin' 's fur 's I know," answered Burns, not quite honestly, and
looking uneasy.

"You needn't try t' git out of it like that, Sim Burns," replied his
sister. "That woman never got into that fit f'r _nawthin'_."

"Wal, if you know more about it than I do, whadgy ask _me_ fur," he
replied angrily.

"Tut, tut!" put in Council, always a peacemaker, "hold y'r horses!
Don't git on y'r ear, childern! Keep cool, and don't spile y'r shirts.
Most likely yer all t' blame. Keep cool an' swear less."

"Wal, I'll bet Sim's more to blame than she is. Why they aint a
harder-workin' woman in the hull State of Ioway than she is--"

"Except Marm Council."

"Except nobody. Look at her, jest skin and bones."

Council chuckled in his vast way. "That's so, mother, measured in that
way she leads over you. You git fat on it."

She smiled a little, her