urally to their lips.

"To be master of the soil, that is one thing," said she to herself in
sickness of spirit; "but to be the slave of it is another. These men
seem to have got their souls all covered with muck." She noticed that
they had no idea of amusement. They had never played anything. They did
not even care for base-ball. Their idea of happiness appeared to be to
do nothing; and there was a good part of the year in which they were
happy,--for these were not for the most part men owning farms; they
were men who hired out to help the farmer. A good many of them had been
farmers at one time and another, but they had failed. They all talked
politics a great deal,--politics and railroads. Annie had not much
patience with it all. She had great confidence in the course of things.
She believed that in this country all men have a fair chance. So when it
came about that the corn and the wheat, which had been raised with such
incessant toil, brought them no money, but only a loss, Annie stood
aghast.

"I said the rates were ruinous," Jim said to her one night, after it was
all over, and he had found out that the year's slavish work had brought
him a loss of three hundred dollars; "it's been a conspiracy from the
first. The price of corn is all right. But by the time we set it down in
Chicago we are out eighteen cents a bushel. It means ruin. What are we
going to do? Here we had the best crop we've had for years--but what's
the use of talking! They have us in their grip."

"I don't see how it is," Annie protested. "I should think it would be
for the interest of the roads to help the people to be as prosperous as
possible."

"Oh, we can't get out! And we're bound to stay and raise grain. And
they're bound to cart it. And that's all there is to it. They force
us to stand every loss, even to the shortage that is made in
transportation. The railroad companies own the elevators, and they have
the cinch on us. Our grain is at their mercy. God knows how I'm going to
raise that interest. As for the five hundred we were going to pay on the
mortgage this year, Annie, we're not in it."

Autumn was well set in by this time, and the brilliant cold sky hung
over the prairies as young and fresh as if the world were not old and
tired. Annie no longer could look as trim as when she first came to the
little house. Her pretty wedding garments were beginning to be worn and
there was no money for more. Jim would not play chess now of even