s of those numerous children, with no more efficient
assistance than could be wrung from her reluctant husband in the
short intervals when he did not sit on the fence. She managed as well
as she could; there was an abundance of fine fruit in that low line of
foliage behind the house--but everybody on Old Bear Mountain had fine
fruit. Something rarer, she had good vegetables--the planting and
hoeing being her own work and her eldest daughter's; an occasional
shallow furrow representing the contribution of her husband's plough.
The althea-bushes and the branches of the laurel sheltered a goodly
number of roosting hens in these September nights; and to the pond,
which had been formed by damming the waters of the spring branch in
the hollow across the road, was moving even now a stately procession
of geese in single file. These simple belongings were the trophies of
a gallant battle against unalterable conditions and the dragging,
dispiriting clog of her husband's inertia.

His inner life--does it seem hard to realize that in that uncouth
personality concentred the complex, incomprehensible, ever-shifting
emotions of that inner life which, after all, is so much stronger, and
deeper, and broader than the material? Here, too, beat the hot heart
of humanity--beat with no measured throb. He had his hopes, his
pleasure, his pain, like those of a higher culture, differing only in
object, and something perhaps in degree. His disappointments were
bitter and lasting; his triumphs, few and sordid; his single
aspiration--to take the premium offered by the directors of the
Kildeer County Fair for the best equestrian.

This incongruous and unpromising ambition had sprung up in this wise:
Between the country people of Kildeer County and the citizens of the
village of Colbury, the county-seat, existed a bitter and deeply
rooted animosity manifesting itself at conventions, elections for the
legislature, etc., the rural population voting as a unit against the
town's candidate. On all occasions of public meetings there was a
struggle to crush any invidious distinction against the "country
boys," especially at the annual fair. Here to the rustics of Kildeer
County came the tug of war. The population of the outlying districts
was more numerous, and, when it could be used as a suffrage-engine,
all-powerful; but the region immediately adjacent to the town was far
more fertile. On those fine meadows grazed the graceful Jersey; there
gamboled su