man of wide sympathies that she was,
had lived alone after David Robinson's death, taking his place as
president of the bank, during the years her only daughter, Janet, had
been off at college and later travelling around the country "on the
stage"--of all things for a daughter of Fallon. When hadn't the town
been full of these widowed, elderly women made childless alike by life
and by death? What others had met successfully, she could also, she
told herself sternly, and still the old Rose, still struggling toward
happiness, she tried to think with a little enthusiasm of her new life,
of the things she would do for others. One recreation she would be able
to enjoy to her heart's content when she moved into town--the movies.
They would tide her over, she felt gratefully. When she was too
lonely, she would go to them and shed her own troubles and problems by
absorption in those of others. She who had been married for years
and had borne two children without ever having had the joy of one
overwhelming kiss, would find romance at last, for an hour, as she
identified herself with the charming heroines of the films.

She was to surrender the farm and the crops as they stood in June,
but as there was to be no new immediate tenant in her old house it
was easily arranged that she could continue in it until the cottage in
Fallon would be empty in September.

Meanwhile, preparations were begun for the new car line which would pass
where the big dairy barn was standing. As the latter went down, board
by board, it seemed to Mrs. Wade that this structure which, in the
building, had been the sign and symbol of her surrender and heartbreak,
now in its destruction, typified Martin's life. It was as if Martin,
himself, were being torn limb from limb. All that he had built would
soon be dust. The sound of the cement breaking under the heavy sledges,
was almost more than she could bear. It was a relief to have the smaller
buildings dragged bodily to other parts of the farm.

Only once before in her memory had there been such a summer and such a
drought. The corn leaves burned to a crisp brown, the ground cracked and
broke into cakes and dust piled high in thick, velvety folds on weeds
and grass. It seemed too strange for words to see others harvest the
wheat and to know that the usual crop could not be put in.

Rose was thankful when her last evening came. Most of her furniture had
been moved in the morning, her boxes had left in the aft