ar ago--money; and so I sha'n't leave him
anythin'. Wouldn't do him no good, if I did," he said to himself.

"Well, we should feel better if you did," said Armida. "I don't want
he should be left out. Neither would mother if she was livin'; she'd
feel bad."

[Illustration: "'WALL, ARMIDY, WALL, LUCAS, THE DOCTOR DON'T SEEM TO
THINK I SHALL TUCKER IT OUT MUCH LONGER.'"]

"I'll settle it with your ma when I see her. Come, now, what do you
say?"

There was a long silence, which Armida broke by saying, "S'posin' him
or me was to want to leave the place, I mean for good--get tired of
stayin' here to home?"

"Wall," said her father with a chuckle, "if either of you feels like
_givin_ your share to the other, you may. I ain't goin' to leave my
old place for either of you to sell to each other nor nobody else. I
expect you to live on't."

"Well," now objected Lucas; "s'posin' one of us should git married,
then how would it be?"

"Why, live along. Put in and work a leetle harder, maybe. This farm
carried a pooty fair number when I was younger. If you should git too
numerous you could build on either side. I guess there ain't no gret
danger," he added.

As neither offered further objections, Mr. Huxter said: "There's been
talk enough, I s'pose. Do you agree to 't?" He waited while each
gave an audible "yes." "Naow," said he, "I hain't an earthly thing to
hamper me."

The father dead, for the brother and sister no new life began. Armida
still skimmed all the milk and made the butter, looked after Lucas
as she had before, and Lucas attended impartially to the whole of the
farm, and Armida sometimes wondered what difference it made. To be
sure the profits were divided with the most rigid exactness; but
everything went tranquilly on until more than a year after their
father's death, when Armida had a suspicion, confirmed by appearances,
that Lucas was becoming interested in a young girl in a neighborhood
a few miles away. The spirit of jealousy surely animated poor Armida,
for nothing else could have prompted her action. Having ascertained
the girl's name, she caused to be conveyed to her the facts, colored
for the occasion, relating to the partition of the house and land; and
the young woman, having a shrewd eye to the main chance, bluntly told
Lucas when next she saw him that she didn't wish the half of a house
nor the half of a farm.

[Illustration: THE DIVIDED HOUSE.--"ARMIDA'S SIDE OF THE HOUSE FELL
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