rnal roof for homes of their own. One and all loved the mountains,
though incoherently, and perhaps without full consciousness of the fact.
They were extremely tenacious of personal rights.

Bob, being an engaging and open-hearted youth, soon gained favour. Among
others he came to know the two Pollock families well. Jim Pollock, with
his large brood, had arrived at a certain philosophical, though
watchful, acceptance of life; but George, younger, recently married,
and eagerly ambitious, chafed sorely. The Pollocks had been in the
country for three generations. They inhabited two places on opposite
sides of a canon. These houses possessed the distinction of having the
only two red-brick chimneys in the hills. They were low, comfortable,
rambling, vine-clad.

"We always run cattle in these hills," said George fiercely to Bob, "and
got along all right. But these last three years it's been bad. Unless we
can fat our cattle on the summer ranges in the high mountains, we can't
do business. The grazing on these lower hills you just _got_ to save for
winter. You can't raise no hay here. Since they begun to crowd us with
old Wright's stock it's tur'ble. I ain't had a head of beef cattle
fittin' to sell, bar a few old cows. And if I ain't got cattle to sell,
where do I get money to live on? I always been out of debt; but this
year I done put a mortgage on the place to get money to go on with."

"We can always eat beef, George," said his wife with a little laugh,
"and miner's lettuce. We ain't the first folks that has had hard
times--and got over it."

"Mebbe not," agreed George, glancing with furrowed brow at a tiny
garment on which Mrs. George was sewing.

Jim Pollock, smoking comfortably in his shirt sleeves before his fire,
was not so worried. His youngest slept in his arms; two children played
and tumbled on the floor; buxom Mrs. Pollock bustled here and there on
household business; the older children sprawled over the table under the
lamp reading; the oldest boy, with wrinkled brow, toiled through the
instructions of a correspondence school course.

"George always takes it hard," said Jim. "I've got six kids, and he'll
have one--or at most two--mebbe. It's hard times all right, and a hard
year. I had to mortgage, too. Lord love you, a mortgage ain't so bad as
a porous plaster. It'll come off. One good year for beef will fix us. We
ain't lost nothing but this year's sales. Our cattle are too pore for
beef, but they're a