t he has to say."

[Illustration]

NEIGHBOR KING.

BY
COLLINS SHACKELFORD.

When my husband, Micah Pyncheon, died he left me alone with our baby
girl, the farm, an' the grasshoppers. It happened in Kansas, in '76.

You don't mind my crying now, do you? 't seems as though I'd never get
the tears all out of me. The time ain't so far away, nor me so old,
but that those days spread out before me like a panorama, nat'ral as
life. I can feel that hot summer sun, not a cloud in the sky, an' the
smell of the bakin' earth movin' all the time in waves of heat until
you got dizzy with the motion an' the scent. An' the grasshoppers! You
can't know how they came a-flyin' by day an' by night in great brown
clouds; how they crept an' crawled an' squirmed through the wheat an'
the corn an' the grass, bitin' an' chewin' every green thing, leavin'
nothin' but black an' dry shreds, an' the earth more desolate than if
a fire had swept over it. They were everywhere out-of-doors; they came
into the house--down the chimney when they couldn't get in through the
door--an' I've picked their bony bodies out of my pockets many a time,
an' knocked 'em off the table so as I might put down a dish. If you
killed one, a thousand came to the funeral. All day an' all night you
heard the click, click, click of their bodies as they walked about,
jumped here an' there, or rubbed against one another. An' poor Micah's
body under the blanket--they were all about it, an' I havin' to brush
'em away. Anybody would 'a' cried if they'd been in my place, such a
dreary day was that--me an' baby all alone, with the village ten miles
off, an' not a soul nearer than neighbor King, three miles away.

Seems to me I don't know how Micah died, it was all so sudden like.
All day he'd been out in the sun a-fightin' the hoppers, an' tryin' to
work when he wasn't fightin'; an' he came in with his head a hangin'
forward an' not a smile on his lips as he put up his hat an' rolled
down his sleeves.

"I'm downright discouraged, Miranda," he said at last, lookin' out of
the window. "There's no use in standin' up agin natur an' the hoppers.
They eat faster'n I can kill 'em, an' in a week the crops 'ull be
about all gone. It looks as though when winter comes we won't have
anythin' to eat. I b'lieve I've killed ten thousand of those creatures
to-day, an' yet they came faster'n drops in a rain-storm."

Then he picked up little Hannah an' lay down on the bed with he