ings.
He was forever writing articles for the weekly paper in the adjoining
town. They talked of running him for the state legislature, and he was
anxious for the nomination.

"I think I might be able to stand it if I could fight 'em!" he declared;
"but to sit here idle, knowing that I have been cheated out of my year's
work, just as much as if I had been knocked down on the road and
the money taken from me, is enough to send me to the asylum with a
strait-jacket on!"

Life grew to take on tragic aspects. Annie used to find herself
wondering if anywhere in the world there were people with light
hearts. For her there was no longer anticipation of joy, or present
companionship, or any divertissement in the whole world. Jim read books
which she did not understand, and with a few of his friends, who dropped
in now and then evenings or Sundays, talked about these books in an
excited manner.

She would go to her room to rest, and lying there in the darkness on the
bed, would hear them speaking together, sometimes all at once, in those
sternly vindictive tones men use when there is revolt in their souls.

"It is the government which is helping to impoverish us," she would hear
Jim saying. "Work is money. That is to say, it is the active form of
money. The wealth of a country is estimated by its power of production.
And its power of production means work. It means there are so many men
with so much capacity. Now the government owes it to these men to have
money enough to pay them for their work; and if there is not enough
money in circulation to pay to each man for his honest and necessary
work, then I say that government is in league with crime. It is trying
to make defaulters of us. It has a hundred ways of cheating us. When I
bought this farm and put the mortgage on it, a day's work would bring
twice the results it will now. That is to say, the total at the end of
the year showed my profits to be twice what they would be now, even if
the railway did not stand in the way to rob us of more than we earn.
So that it will take just twice as many days' work now to pay off this
mortgage as it would have done at the time it was contracted. It's a
conspiracy, I tell you! Those Eastern capitalists make a science of
ruining us."

He got more eloquent as time went on, and Annie, who had known him
first as rather a careless talker, was astonished at the boldness of his
language. But conversation was a lost art with him. He no longe