d still the same hot dry sky, with only now and
then a shred of cloud floating lazily across the blue. The grass
in the glades grew parched and harsh; the trees rattled their
shriveled leaves; creek beds lay glaring white and dusty in the
sun; and all the wild things in the woods sought the distant river
bottom. In the Mutton Hollow neighborhood, only the spring below
the Matthews place held water; and all day the stock on the range,
crowding around the little pool, tramped out the narrow fringe of
green grass about its edge, and churned its bright life into mud
in their struggle.

Fall came and there was no relief. Crops were a total failure.
Many people were without means to buy food for themselves and their
stock for the coming winter and the months until another crop
could be grown and harvested. Family after family loaded their few
household goods into the big covered wagons, and, deserting their
homes, set out to seek relief in more fortunate or more wealthy
portions of the country.

The day came at last when Sammy found the shepherd in the little
grove, near the deer lick, and told him that she and her father
were going to move.

"Father says there is nothing else to do. Even if we could squeeze
through the winter, we couldn't hold out until he could make
another crop."

Throwing herself on the ground, she picked a big yellow daisy from
a cluster, that, finding a little moisture oozing from a dirt-
filled crevice of the rock, had managed to live, and began pulling
it to pieces.

In silence the old man watched her. He had not before realized how
much the companionship of this girl was to him. To the refined and
cultivated scholar, whose lot had been cast so strangely with the
rude people of the mountain wilderness, the companionship of such
a spirit and mind was a necessity. Unconsciously Sammy had
supplied the one thing lacking, and by her demands upon his
thought had kept the shepherd from mental stagnation and morbid
brooding. Day after day she had grown into his life--his
intellectual and spiritual child, and though she had dropped the
rude speech of the native, she persisted still in calling him by
his backwoods title, "Dad." But the little word had come to hold a
new meaning for them both. He saw now, all at once, what he would
lose when she went away.

One by one, the petals from the big daisy fell from the girl's
hand, dull splashes of gold against her dress and on the grass.

"Where will you g