rom the hills back of the mill. The waste-weir was a
foaming torrent, and spread itself in muddy shallows across the meadow
beyond the old garden where the robins and blue birds were
house-hunting. Friend Barton's trouble stirred with the life-blood of
the year, and pressed upon him sorely; but as yet he gave it no words.
He plodded about among his lean kine, tempering the winds of March to
his untimely lambs, and reconciling unnatural ewes to their maternal
duties.

Friend Barton had never heard of the doctrine of the survival of the
fittest; though it was the spring of 1812, and England and America were
investigating the subject on the seas, while the nations of Europe were
practically illustrating it. The "hospital tent," as the boys called an
old corn-basket, covered with carpet, which stood beside the kitchen
chimney, was seldom without an occupant,--a brood of chilled chickens,
a weakly lamb, or a wee pig (with too much blue in its pinkness), which
had been left behind by its stouter brethren in the race for existence.
The old mill hummed away through the day, and often late in the evening
if time pressed, upon the grists which added a thin, intermittent
stream of tribute to the family income. Whenever work was "slack,"
Friend Barton was sawing or chopping in the wood-shed adjoining the
kitchen; every moment he could seize or make he was there, stooping
over the rapidly growing pile.

"Seems to me, father, thee's in a great hurry with the wood this
spring. I don't know when we've had such a pile ahead."

"'Twon't burn up any faster for being chopped," Friend Barton said; and
then his wife Rachel knew that if he had a reason for being
"forehanded" with the wood, he was not ready to give it.

One rainy April afternoon, when the smoky gray distances began to take
a tinge of green, and through the drip and rustle of the rain the call
of the robins sounded, Friend Barton sat in the door of the barn,
oiling the road-harness. The old chaise had been wheeled out and
greased, and its cushions beaten and dusted.

An ox team with a load of grain creaked up the hill and stopped at the
mill door. The driver, seeing Friend Barton's broad-brimmed drab felt
hat against the dark interior of the barn, came down the short lane
leading from the mill past the house and farm-buildings.

"Fixin' up for travellin', Uncle Tommy?"

Vain compliments were unacceptable to Thomas Barton, and he was
generally known and addressed as "Unc