oe. The work of the farm was accomplished by patent devices in wood and
steel. To utilize these aids, to keep up with the farming procession,
required a degree of capital, and no surplus had accrued upon the
Appleman farm. Mrs. Appleman was compelled to borrow when she bought her
mowing-machine, and the slight mortgage then put upon the place was
increased when other necessary purchases were made in time. The mortgage
now amounted to eleven hundred dollars, and had been that for over four
years, the annual interest being met with the greatest difficulty. The
farm, even with the few improved facilities secured, barely supported
the widow and her daughter. They could lay nothing aside, and now, in
1894, there was not merely a threat, but the certainty, of a foreclosure
unless the eleven hundred dollars should be paid. It was due on the
twentieth of September. It was the first of September when John Appleman
started from Guaymas for home. It was nine days later when he left the
little Michigan station in the morning and walked down the country road
toward his farm.

He was sixty-four years of age now, but he was a better-looking man than
he was when he entered the army. His step was vigorous, his eye was
clear, and there was lacking all that dull look which comes to the
countenance of the man who drinks intoxicants. He was breathing deeply
as he walked, and gazing with a sort of childish delight upon the
Michigan landscape about him.

It seemed to Appleman as if he were awakening from a dream. Real dreams
had often come to him of this scene and his return to it, but the
reality exceeded the figments of the night. A quail whistled, and he
compared its note with that of its crested namesake in Mexico, much to
the latter's disadvantage. A flicker passed in dipping flight above the
pasture, and it seemed to him that never before was such a golden color
as that upon its wings. Even the call of the woodpecker was music to
him, and the chatter and chirr of a red squirrel perched jauntily on the
rider of a rail fence seemed to him about the most joyous sound he had
ever heard. He felt as if he were somehow being born again. And when his
own farm came into view, the feeling but became intensified. He thought
he had never seen so fair a place.

He crossed the bridge above the creek which flowed through his own farm,
and saw a man engaged in cutting away the willow bush which had assumed
too much importance along the borders of the