luttering necktie at her warm, round throat. And the tears were
coursing hotter, the well of them open, the stone at the mouth of it
rolled away, the recollection of those harsh days almost too hard to
bear.

"And you mind how you read in the book from the farmer college how a
handful of corn a day would save the life of a sheep, and tide it over
the time of stress and storm till it could find the grass in under the
snow? Ah-h, ye mind how you read it, Joan, and come ridin' to tell me?
And how you took the wagons and the teams and drove that bitter length
in wind and snow to old Wellfleet's place down on the river, and
brought corn that saved to me the lives of no less than twenty
thousand sheep? It's not you and me, that's gone through these things
side by side, that forgets them in the fair days, Joan, my little
darlin' gerrel. Them was hard days, and you didn't desert me and leave
me to go alone."

Joan shook her head, the sob that she had been smothering breaking
from her in a sharp, riving cry. Tim, feeling that he had softened
her, perhaps, laid his hand on her shoulder, and felt her body
trembling under the emotion that his slow recital of past hardships
had stirred.

"It'll not be that you'll leave me in a hole now, Joan," he coaxed,
stroking her hair back from her forehead, his touch gentle as his
heart could be when interest bent it so.

"I gave you that--all those years that other girls have to themselves,
I mean, and all that work that made me coarse and rough and kept me
down in ignorance--I gave you out of my youth till the well of my
giving has gone dry. I can't give what you ask today, Dad; I can't
give you that."

"Now, Joan, take it easy a bit, draw your breath on it, take it easy,
gerrel."

Joan's chin was up again, the tremor gone out of it, the shudder of
sorrow for the lost years stilled in her beautiful, strong body. Her
voice was steady when she spoke:

"I'll go on working, share and share alike with you, like I'm doing
now, or no share, no nothing, if you want me to, if you need me to,
but I can't--I can't!"

"I was a hard master over you, my little Joan," said Tim, gently, as
if torn by the thorn of regret for his past blindness.

"You were, but you didn't mean to be. I don't mind it now, I'm still
young enough to catch up on what I missed--I _am_ catching up on it,
every day."

"But now when it comes in my way to right it, to make all your life
easy to you, Joan, you put your ba