he scattered white blotches
closed together as he ran towards them, and fled, bleating, to the flock
where it clustered at the pasture gate.

In a moment he had driven them across the road and behind the bars of
the cow-pen.

When he entered the house a little later he found that the family had
had supper, a single plate remaining for himself. His stepmother,
looking jaded and nervous, was putting salted herring to soak in an
earthenware bowl, while she scolded Sairy Jane, who was patching Jubal's
apron.

"It's goin' on ten years sence I've stopped to draw breath," said Marthy
Burr, "an' I'm clean wore out. 'Tain't no better than a dog's life,
nohow--a woman an' a dog air about the only creeturs as would put up
with it, an' they're the biggest pair of fools the Lord ever made. Here
I've been standin' at the tub from sunrise to sunset, with my jaw a'most
splittin' from my face, an' thar's yo' pa a-settin' at his pipe as
unconsarned as if I wa'nt his lawful wife--the more's the pity! It's the
lawful wives as have the work to do, an' the lawfuller the wives the
lawfuller the work. If this here government ain't got nothin' better to
do than to drive poor women till they drop I reckon we'd as well stop
payin' taxes to keep it goin'."

Nicholas wiped his heated brow on his shirt-sleeve and hung his hat on
the back of a bottomless chair. Jubal, who was rolling on the floor,
gave a gurgle and made a grab at it, to be soundly boxed by his mother
as she reseated him at Sairy Jane's feet. His gurgle wavered dolorously
and rose into a howl.

"Have you been to supper, ma?" asked Nicholas cheerfully.

"Lord, Nick, it's a long ways past supper-time," answered Sairy Jane,
relieved by the interruption. "The things air all washed up, ain't they,
pa?"

Amos Burr scowled heavily upon the boy's head, his phlegmatic nature
goaded into resentment by his wife's ill-temper and the lamentations of
Jubal.

"I don't reckon you expect supper to keep waitin' till breakfast," he
said. "You've given your ma trouble enough 'thout makin' her do an extra
washin' up on your o'count. You've gone clean crazy sence you've been
loafin' round with them Battles. I don't see as you air much o'count,
nohow."

Nicholas raised his eyes to his father's face and looked at him
fixedly. For a moment he did not speak, and then he said slowly:

"I'm as good as a hand to you."

He was thinking doggedly that he had never hated any one so much as he
hated hi