have a little tear in her eye, and she nod to
where Bargon stare' houtside, and she say: 'If this summer go wrong, it
will kill him. He work and work and fret and worry for me and Marie, and
sometimes he just sit and look at me and say not a word.'

"I say to her that there will be good crop, and next year we will be
ver' happy. So, the time go on, and I send up a leetla snack of pork
and molass' and tabac, and sugar and tea, and I get a letter from Bargon
bimeby, and he say that heverything go right, he t'ink, this summer.
He say I must come up. It is not dam easy to go in the summer, when the
mill run night and day; but I say I will go.

"When I get up to Bargon's I laugh, for all the hunder' acre is ver'
fine, and Bargon stan' hin the door, and stretch out his hand, and say:
'Rachette, there is six hunder' dollar for me.' I nod my head, and fetch
out a horn, and he have one, his eyes all bright like a lime-kiln. He is
thin and square, and his beard grow ver' thick and rough and long, and
his hands are like planks. Norinne, she is ver' happy, too, and Marie
bite on my finger, and I give him sugar-stick to suck.

"Bimeby Norinne say to me, ver' soft: 'If a hailstorm or a hot wind
come, that is the end of it all, and of my poor Gal.'

"What I do? I laugh and ketch Marie under the arms, and I sit down, and
I put him on my foot, and I sing that dam funny English song--'Here
We Go to Banbury Cross.' An' I say: 'It will be all as happy as Marie
pretty quick. Bargon he will have six hunder' dollar, and you a new
dress and a hired girl to help you.'

"But all the time that day I think about a hail-storm or a hot wind
whenever I look out on that hunder' acre farm. It is so beautiful,
as you can guess--the wheat, the barley, the corn, the potatoes, the
turnip, all green like sea-water, and pigeons and wild ducks flying up
and down, and the horse and the ox standing in a field ver' comfer'ble.

"We have good time that day, and go to bed all happy that night. I get
up at five o'clock, an' I go hout. Bargon stan' there looking hout on
his field with the horse-bridle in his hand. 'The air not feel right,'
he say to me. I t'ink the same, but I say to him: 'Your head not feel
right--him too sof'.' He shake his head and go down to the field for his
horse and ox, and hitch them up together, and go to work making a road.

"It is about ten o'clock when the dam thing come. Piff! go a hot splash
of air in my face, and then I know tha