e cabin windows. The bigger of the two lynxes turned
straight over backward and lay without a quiver, smashed by the heavy
charge of buckshot with which Jake had loaded the gun. The other,
grazed by a scattering pellet, sprang into the air with a screech,
then turned and ran for her life across the snow, stretching out like
a terrified cat.

With a proud smile the old woman stood the smoking gun against the
wall and straightened her cap. For perhaps half a minute Melindy stood
rigid, staring at the dead lynx. Then, dropping her axe, she fled to
the cabin, flung herself down with her face in her grandmother's lap,
and broke into a storm of sobs.

The old woman gazed down upon her with some surprise, and stroked the
fair, fluffy head lovingly as she murmured: "There, there! There's
nothing to take on about! Though you be such a little mite of a
towhead, you've got the grit, you've got the grit, Melindy Griffis.
It's proud of you I am, and it's proud your father'll be when I tell
him about it."

Then, as the girl's weeping continued, and her slender shoulders
continued to twist with her sobs, the rugged old face that bent above
her grew tenderly solicitous.

"There, there!" she murmured again. "'Tain't good for you to take on
so, deary. Hadn't you better finish beating up the pancakes before the
batter spiles?"

Thus potently adjured, although she knew as well as her grandmother
that there was no immediate danger of the batter spoiling, the girl
got up, dashed the back of her hand across her eyes with a little
laugh, closed the door, got out another spoon from the table drawer,
and cheerfully resumed her interrupted task of mixing pancakes. And
the sheep, having slowly extricated themselves from the deep snow
behind the well-house, huddled together, with heads down, in the
middle of the yard, fearfully eyeing the limp body which lay before
the shed.

Mrs. Gammit's Pig

"I've come to borry yer gun!" said Mrs. Gammit, appearing suddenly, a
self-reliant figure, at the open door of the barn where Joe Barron sat
mending his harness. She wore a short cotton homespun petticoat and a
dingy waist; while a limp pink cotton sunbonnet, pushed far back from
her perspiring forehead, released unmanageable tufts of her stiff,
iron-grey hair.

"What be _you_ awantin' of a gun, Mrs. Gammit?" inquired the
backwoodsman, looking up without surprise. He had not seen Mrs.
Gammit, to be sure, for three months; but he had known