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She was too simple and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of her beauty, which would have brought her competency once–if sold in the right market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenly thinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horse which Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when it was too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision, that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till at last she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in the furrow, groaned under the whip–and died.

Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and she held her breath to think harder upon it. She concluded at last, grimly, that she didn’t care–only for the children.

The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the low mutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles a little, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.

Boom, boom, boom, it broke nearer and nearer, as if a vast cordon of cannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious only of pleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrant storm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then, in the cool, sweet hush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deep sleep.

III.

When she woke the younger children were playing about on the floor in their night-clothes, and little Pet was sitting in a square of sunshine, intent on one of his shoes. He was too young to know how poor and squalid his surroundings were–the patch of sunshine flung on the floor glorified it all. He–little animal–was happy.

The poor of the Western prairies lie almost as unhealthily close together as do the poor of the city tenements. In the small hut of the peasant there is as little chance to escape close and tainting contact as in the coops and dens of the North End of proud Boston. In the midst of oceans of land, floods of sunshine and gulfs of verdure, the farmer lives in two or three small rooms. Poverty’s eternal cordon is ever round the poor.

“Ma, why didn’t you sleep with Pap last night?” asked Bob, the seven-year-old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dull red.

“You hush, will yeh? Because–I–it was too warm–and there was a storm comin’. You never mind askin’ such questions. Is he gone out?”

“Yup. I heerd him callin’ the pigs. It’s Sunday, ain’t it, ma?”

The fact seemed to startle her.

“Why, yes, so it is! Wal! Now, Sadie, you jump up an’ dress quick ‘s y’can, an’ Bob an’ Sile, you run down an’ bring s’m’ water,” she commanded, in nervous haste, beginning to dress. In the middle of the room there was scarce space to stand beneath the rafters.

When Sim came in for his breakfast he found it on the table, but his wife was absent.

“Where’s y’r ma?” he asked, with a little less of the growl in his voice.

“She’s upstairs with Pet.”

The man ate his breakfast in dead silence, till at last Bob ventured to say:

“What makes ma ac’ so?”

“Shut up!” was the brutal reply. The children began to take sides with the mother–all but the oldest girl, who was ten years old. To her the father turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in his rough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docile accordingly.

They wore pitiably clad; like many farm-children, indeed, they could hardly be said to be clad at all. Sadie had on but two garments, a sort of undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which her bare, yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered with scratches.