there is you shall
have, an' I'll get my share for this year out of next year's crops.
I'm glad that suits you. Now, you must not live here alone. One of my
men has a sister in the village, a stout, healthy, willin' girl, who
wants a home. She'll be glad to come here. I'll try to superintend
affairs for you, if you're willin', an' make the best of everything.
Oh, we'll keep you in good shape, never fear; but you mustn't mind my
askin' questions, so that I can get a knowledge of affairs. Now, don't
thank me. I'd rather you wouldn't. Just keep cheerful, an' as long as
we've got to live, let's make the best of life."

[Illustration: "THERE WAS HARDLY A DAY HE DID NOT RIDE OVER THE LITTLE
FARM TO SEE HOW THINGS WERE GOIN'."]

This was very good from neighbor King--somethin' you wouldn't expect
from such a sad or solemn-lookin' man, a man so quiet, so reserved,
appearin' always as if he had some grief of his own, so that he could
sympathize with others in misery. He must have been forty years old,
for his dark brown hair was showin' gray around the temples, an' there
were deep wrinkles around the corners of his mouth, an' lots of little
ones around his deep, sunken brown eyes. It always seemed to me as if
he'd been constructed for a minister or a lawyer, an' stopped half way
as a farmer. He was no half-acre farmer, but a worker of hundreds of
acres; an' my little homestead was only a potato patch alongside of
his. The queerest thing about his place was that there wasn't a woman
on it. All the work, cookin' an' everything was done by men. Well,
girls was scarce in those days an' those parts, an' perhaps that was
the reason. Maybe, again, he was afraid of women, an' didn't want 'em
bossin' around his work. I didn't know an' didn't care. It was no
concern of mine. I only knew he was mighty good to me in my
affliction--the truest, steadiest, most unselfish friend a forlorn
woman could have; an' every night I prayed for that same neighbor
King, askin' the Lord to bless him for the goodness an' kindness he
had shown to me.

True enough, the grasshoppers didn't leave me much that year, just
enough to keep soul and body together, with economy. The pesky things
eat everything from pussly to leaves. I b'lieve they'd 'a' eaten the
green out of the sky if they could 'a' got at it. Why, the earth
looked as if the devil had gone over it with a brush of brown paint,
missin' a spot here an' there that come up green after the critters
ha