er on her breast as she had tended him in his weakness--the
throb of it hurt her now. And perhaps he would never understand. She
couldn't tell him because--because of his poverty and the hurt it
would give him--not to be able to help--to save her. No, he must not
know until too late--and _never_ understand! Desperately thus wave
after wave swept over her, crushing, grinding, mocking her womanhood,
until, helpless and breathless, she was tossed, well nigh unconscious,
upon the shore of exhaustion. The fight of the instinctive woman for
its own was over and the sacrifice was prepared. She was bound to the
wheel and ready for the first turn, though out under the skies,
"_stretched as a tent to dwell in_," the cycle was moving on its
course turned by the same force from the same source that numbers the
sparrows.

"Rose Mary, child," came in a gentle voice, and Uncle Tucker's
trembling old hand was laid with a caress on the bowed head before she
had even heard him come into the milk-house, "now you've got to look
up and get the kite to going again. I've been under the waters, too,
but I've pulled myself ashore with a-thinking that nothing's a-going
to take _you_ away from me and them. What does it matter if we were to
have to take the bed covers and make a tent for ourselves to camp
along Providence Road just so we all can crawl under the flap
together? I need nothing in the world but to be sure your smile is not
a-going to die out."

"Oh, honey-sweet, it isn't--it isn't," answered Rose Mary, looking up
at him quickly with the tenderness breaking through the agony in a
perfect radiance. "It's all right, Uncle Tucker, I know it will be!"

"Course it's all right because it _is_ right," answered Uncle Tucker
bravely, with a real smile breaking through the exhaustion on his
face that showed so plainly the fight he had been having out in his
fields, now no longer his as he realized. "Gid has got the right of
it, and it wasn't honest of us to hold on at this losing rate as long
as we did. There is just a little more value to the land than the
mortgage, I take it, and we can pay the behind interest with that, and
when we do move offen the place we won't leave debt to nobody on it,
even if we do leave--the graves."

"Did he say--when--when he expected you to--give up the Briars?" asked
Rose Mary in a guarded tone of voice, as if she wanted to be sure of
all the facts before she told of the climax she saw had not been even
sugge