morning. Since sundown he
and the veterinarian from Breton Junction had been working out in the
lot by the light of a lantern. Since sundown Mary, his wife, had hurried
back and forth from the kitchen with pots of hot water.

"Better go to bed now, gal," he had said over and over. But she had not
gone.

Since sundown, also, old Prince, his big white Llewellyn setter, had
hung about within the circle of light cast by the lantern. He had
followed Mary to the kitchen and back, as if she needed a protector. He
had gone with Jim to the well after water. While Jim and the doctor
worked, he had sat gravely on his haunches, looking solemnly on. Now the
veterinarian had driven away, and old Jim, long, lank, a bit stooped,
stood in the middle of the lot, Mary on one side, Prince on the other.
Before him lay his mule, dead.

Now a mule is mortal, and a dead one not uncommon. But on this
particular mule Jim had depended for his cotton crop. And on his cotton
crop he had depended for money to pay off the mortgage on his farm--the
farm that represented his and Mary's belated plunge in life.

Perhaps to say Mary's plunge would be nearer the truth. But for her, Jim
would have remained an easy-going renter all his days, with a bird dog
before the fire and a shotgun over the mantel and fishing poles out
under the shed. His was the lore of field and stream, not of business.
It was Mary who, two years before, had seen in the advancing price of
cotton their chance to own a farm. She had talked him into trying to
make terms with Old Man Thornycroft, his landlord.

"All right, gal," he had said one morning; "here goes."

He had come back with a new light in his gray, twinkling sportsman's
eyes. He had got right down to work. The sound of his hammer as he
patched barn and sheds had taken the place of the sound of his shotgun
in the woods. He had followed the furrow as earnestly as if it were a
wild-turkey track in the swamp, while old Prince, that mighty hunter,
looked on bewildered. He had raised good crops. He had met his first
payments. Then had come the great war and thirty-cent cotton and the
chance to pay out. He had redoubled his efforts. He had borrowed to the
limit on the coming season's prospects. He had bought ample fertilizer,
a new wagon, a new plough. And now the mule, without which all these
things were useless, lay at his feet a mass of worse than useless flesh.

The shivering voice of Mary at his side--he hadn't realiz