s of joy.

The Boy silently took his mother's hand and asked in subdued tones:

"What is the pest, Ma, and what makes it?"

"Nobody knows," she answered softly. "It comes like a thief in the
night and stays for months and sometimes for years. They call it the
'milk-sick' because the cows die, too--and sometimes the horses. The old
Indian women say it starts from the cows eating a poison flower in the
woods. The doctors know nothing about it. It just comes and kills,
that's all."

The little hand suddenly gripped hers with trembling hold:

"O Ma, if it kills you!"

A tender smile lighted her dark face as the warmth of his love ran like
fire through her veins.

"It can't harm me, my son, unless God wills it. When he calls I shall be
ready."

All the way home he clung to her hand and sometimes when they paused
stroked it tenderly with both his.

"What's it like?" he asked at last. "Can't you take bitters for it in
time to stop it? How do you know when it's come?"

"You begin to feel drowsy, a whitish coating is on the tongue, a burning
in the stomach, the feet and legs get cold. You're restless and the
pulse grows weak."

"How long does it last?"

"Sometimes it kills in three days, sometimes two weeks. Sometimes it's
chronic and hangs on for years and then kills."

Every morning through the long black summer of the scourge he asked her
with wistful tenderness if she were well. Her cheerful answers at last
brought peace to his anxious heart and he gradually ceased to fear. She
was too sweet and loving and God too good that she should die. Besides,
both his father and mother had given him a lesson in quiet, simple
heroism that steadied his nerves.

He looked at the rugged figure of his father with a new sense of
admiration. He was no more afraid of Death than of Life. He was giving
himself without a question in an utterly unselfish devotion to the
stricken community. There were no doctors within thirty miles, and if
one came he could but shake his head and advise simple remedies that did
no good. Only careful nursing counted for anything. Without money,
without price, without a murmur the father gave his life to this work.
No neighbor within five miles was stricken that he did not find a place
by that bedside in fearless, loving, unselfish service.

And when Death came, this simple friend went for his tools, cut down a
tree, ripped the boards from its trunk, made the coffin, and with tender
reverence dug