d gone West or
to the cities. Men began to pity him rather than laugh at him, which
hurt him more than their ridicule. They began to favor him at threshing
or at the fall hog-killing.

"Oh, you're getting old, Daddy; you'll have to give up this heavy work.
Of course, if you feel able to do it, why, all right! Like to have you
do it, but I guess we'll have to have a man to do the heavy lifting, I
s'pose."

"I s'pose not, sir! I am jest as able to yank a hawg as ever, sir; yes,
sir, demmit--demmit! Do you think I've got one foot in the grave?"

Nevertheless, Daddy often failed to come to time on appointed days, and
it was painful to hear him trying to explain, trying to make light of it
all.

"M' caugh wouldn't let me sleep last night. A gol-dum leetle, nasty,
ticklin' caugh, too; but it kept me awake, fact was, an'--well, m' wife,
she said I hadn't better come. But don't you worry, sir; it won't happen
again, sir; no, sir."

His hands got stiffer year by year, and his simple tunes became
practically a series of squeaks and squalls. There came a time when the
fiddle was laid away almost altogether, for his left hand got caught in
the cog-wheels of the horse-power, and all four of the fingers on that
hand were crushed. Thereafter he could only twang a little on the
strings. It was not long after this that he struck his foot with the ax
and lamed himself for life.

As he lay groaning in bed, Mr. Jennings went in to see him and tried to
relieve the old man's feelings by telling him the number of times he had
practically cut his feet off, and said he knew it was a terrible hard
thing to put up with.

"Gol dummit, it ain't the pain," the old sufferer yelled, "it's the dum
awkwardness. I've chopped all my life; I can let an ax in up to the
maker's name, and hew to a hair-line; yes, sir! It was jest them dum new
mittens my wife made; they was s' slippery," he ended, with a groan.

As a matter of fact, the one accident hinged upon the other. It was the
failure of his left hand, with its useless fingers, to do its duty, that
brought the ax down upon his foot. The pain was not so much physical as
mental. To think that he, who could hew to a hair-line, right and left
hand, should cut his own foot like a ten-year-old boy--that scared him.
It brought age and decay close to him. For the first time in his life he
felt that he was fighting a losing battle.

A man like this lives so much in the flesh that when his limbs begin t