rm."

"People that are mortgaged don't have to go to the poor farm, do they,
Mr. Perkins?" asked Rebecca, with a shiver of fear as she remembered her
home farm at Sunnybrook and the debt upon it; a debt which had lain like
a shadow over her childhood.

"Bless your soul, no; not unless they fail to pay up; but Sal Perry an'
her husband hadn't got fur enough along in life to BE mortgaged. You
have to own something before you can mortgage it."

Rebecca's heart bounded as she learned that a mortgage represented a
certain stage in worldly prosperity.

"Well," she said, sniffing in the fragrance of the new-mown hay and
growing hopeful as she did so; "maybe the sick woman will be better such
a beautiful day, and maybe the husband will come back to make it up and
say he's sorry, and sweet content will reign in the humble habitation
that was once the scene of poverty, grief, and despair. That's how it
came out in a story I'm reading."

"I hain't noticed that life comes out like stories very much," responded
the pessimistic blacksmith, who, as Rebecca privately thought, had read
less than half a dozen books in his long and prosperous career.

A drive of three or four miles brought the party to a patch of woodland
where many of the tall pines had been hewn the previous winter. The roof
of a ramshackle hut was outlined against a background of young birches,
and a rough path made in hauling the logs to the main road led directly
to its door.

As they drew near the figure of a woman approached--Mrs. Lizy Ann
Dennett, in a gingham dress, with a calico apron over her head.

"Good morning, Mr. Perkins," said the woman, who looked tired and
irritable. "I'm real glad you come right over, for she took worse after
I sent you word, and she's dead."

Dead! The word struck heavily and mysteriously on the children's ears.
Dead! And their young lives, just begun, stretched on and on, all
decked, like hope, in living green. Dead! And all the rest of the world
reveling in strength. Dead! With all the daisies and buttercups waving
in the fields and the men heaping the mown grass into fragrant cocks
or tossing it into heavily laden carts. Dead! With the brooks tinkling
after the summer showers, with the potatoes and corn blossoming, the
birds singing for joy, and every little insect humming and chirping,
adding its note to the blithe chorus of warm, throbbing life.

"I was all alone with her. She passed away suddenly jest about break o'