Jim Lancy's Waterloo

Jim Lancy's Waterloo

"WE must get married before time to put
in crops," he wrote. "We must make
a success of the farm the first year, for luck.
Could you manage to be ready to come out
West by the last of February? After March
opens there will be no let-up, and I do not
see how I could get away. Make it Febru-
ary, Annie dear. A few weeks more or less
can make no difference to you, but they
make a good deal of difference to me."

The woman to whom this was written read
it with something like anger. "I don't be-
lieve he's so impatient for me!" she said
to herself. "What he wants is to get the
crops in on time." But she changed the date
of their wedding, and made it February.

Their wedding journey was only from
the Illinois village where she lived to their
Nebraska farm. They had never been much
together, and they had much to say to each
other.

"Farming won't come hard to you," Jim
assured her. "All one needs to farm with
is brains."

"What a success you'll make of it!" she
cried saucily.

"I wish I had my farm clear," Jim went
on; "but that's more than any one has
around me. I'm no worse off than the rest.
We've got to pay off the mortgage, Annie."

"Of course we must. We'll just do with-
out till we get the mortgage lifted. Hard
work will do anything, I guess. And I'm
not afraid to work, Jim, though I've never
had much experience."

Jim looked out of the window a long time,
at the gentle undulations of the brown Iowa
prairie. His eyes seemed to pierce beneath
the sod, to the swelling buds of the yet
invisible grass. He noticed how disdain-
fully the rains of the new year beat down
the grasses of the year that was gone. It
opened to his mind a vision of the season's
possibilities. For a moment, even amid
the smoke of the car, he seemed to scent
clover, and hear the stiff swishing of the
corn and the dull burring of the bees.

"I wish sometimes," he said, leaning for-
ward to look at his bride, "that I had been
born something else than a farmer. But I
can no more help farming, Annie, than a
bird can help singing, or a bee making
honey. I didn't take to farming. I was
simply born with a hoe in my hand."

"I don't know a blessed thing about it,"
Annie confessed. "But I made up my
mind that a farm with you was better than
a town without you. That's all there is to
it, as far as I am concerned."

Jim Lancy slid his arm softly about her
waist, unseen by the other passengers.
Annie looked up apprehensively, to see if
any one was noticing. But they were
eating their lunches. It was a common
coach on which they were riding. There
was a Pullman attached to the train, and
Annie had secretly thought that, as it was
their wedding journey, it might be more
becoming to take it. But Jim had made
no suggestion about it. What he said later
explained the reason.

"I would have liked to have brought you
a fine present," he said. "It seemed shabby
to come with nothing but that little ring.
But I put everything I had on our home,
you know. And yet, I'm sure you'll think
it poor enough after what you've been used
to. You'll forgive me for only bringing the
ring, my dear?"

"But you brought me something better,"
Annie whispered. She was a foolish little
girl. "You brought me love, you know."
Then they rode in silence for a long time.
Both of them were new to the phraseology
of love. Their simple compliments to each
other were almost ludicrous. But any one
who might have chanced to overhear them
would have been charmed, for they betrayed
an innocence as beautiful as an unclouded
dawn.

Annie tried hard not to be depressed
by the treeless stretches of the Nebraska
plains.

"This is different from Illinois," she
ventured once, gently; "it is even different
from Iowa."

"Yes, yes," cried Jim, enthusiastically, "it
is different! It is the finest country in the
world! You never feel shut in. You can
always see off. I feel at home after I get
in Nebraska. I'd choke back where you
live, with all those little gullies and the trees
everywhere. It's a mystery to me how
farmers have patience to work there."

Annie opened her eyes. There was evi-
dently more than one way of looking at a
question. The farm-houses seemed very
low and mean to her, as she looked at them
from the window. There were no fences,
excepting now and then the inhospitable
barbed wire. The door-yards were bleak to
her eyes, without the ornamental shrubbery
which every farmer in her part of the country
was used to tending. The cattle stood un-
shedded in their corrals. The reapers and
binders stood rusting in the dull drizzle.

"How shiftless!" cried Annie, indignantly.
"What do these men mean by letting their
machinery lie out that way? I should think
one winter of lying out would hurt it more
than three summers of using."

"It does. But sheds are not easily had.
Lumber is dear."

"But I should think it would be economy
even then."

"Yes," he said, "perhaps. But we all do
that way out here. It takes some money for
a man to be economical with. Some of us
haven't even that much."

There was a six-mile ride from the station.
The horses were waiting, hitched up to a
serviceable light wagon, and driven by the
"help." He was a thin young man, with
red hair, and he blushed vicariously for Jim
and Annie, who were really too entertained
with each other, and at the idea of the new
life opening up before them, to think any-
thing about blushing. At the station, a
number of men insisted on shaking hands
with Jim, and being introduced to his wife.
They were all bearded, as if shaving were
an unnecessary labor, and their trousers were
tucked in dusty top-boots, none of which
had ever seen blacking. Annie had a sense
of these men seeming unwashed, or as if
they had slept in their clothes. But they
had kind voices, and their eyes were very
friendly. So she shook hands with them all
with heartiness, and asked them to drive out
and bring their womenkind.

"I am going to make up my mind not
to be lonesome," she declared; "but, all the
same, I shall want to see some women."

Annie had got safe on the high seat of
the wagon, and was balancing her little feet
on the inclined foot-rest, when a woman
came running across the street, calling
aloud, --

"Mr. Lancy! Mr. Lancy! You're not
going to drive away without introducing
me to your wife!"

She was a thin little woman, with move-
ments as nervous and as graceless as those of
a grasshopper. Her dun-colored garments
seemed to have all the hue bleached out of
them with wind and weather. Her face was
brown and wrinkled, and her bright eyes
flashed restlessly, deep in their sockets. Two
front teeth were conspicuously missing; and
her faded hair was blown in wisps about
her face. Jim performed the introduction,
and Annie held out her hand. It was a
pretty hand, delicately gloved in dove color.
The woman took it in her own, and after
she had shaken it, held it for a silent mo-
ment, looking at it. Then she almost threw
it from her. The eyes which she lifted
to scan the bright young face above her
had something like agony in them. Annie
blushed under this fierce scrutiny, and the
woman, suddenly conscious of her demeanor,
forced a smile to her lips.

"I'll come out an' see yeh," she said, in
cordial tones. "May be, as a new house-
keeper, you'll like a little advice. You've a
nice place, an' I wish yeh luck."

"Thank you. I'm sure I'll need advice,"
cried Annie, as they drove off. Then she
said to Jim, "Who is that old woman?"

"Old woman? Why, she ain't a day over
thirty, Mis' Dundy ain't."

Annie looked at her husband blankly.
But he was already talking of something
else, and she asked no more about the
woman, though all the way along the road
the face seemed to follow her. It might
have been this that caused the tightening
about her heart. For some way her vivacity
had gone; and the rest of the ride she asked
no questions, but sat looking straight before
her at the northward stretching road, with
eyes that felt rather than saw the brown,
bare undulations, rising every now and then
clean to the sky; at the side, little famished-
looking houses, unacquainted with paint,
disorderly yards, and endless reaches of
furrowed ground, where in summer the corn
had waved.

The horses needed no indication of the
line to make them turn up a smooth bit of
road that curved away neatly 'mid the ragged
grasses. At the end of it, in a clump of
puny scrub oaks, stood a square little house,
in uncorniced simplicity, with blank, uncur-
tained windows staring out at Annie, and for
a moment her eyes, blurred with the cold,
seemed to see in one of them the despairing
face of the woman with the wisps of faded
hair blowing about her face.

"Well, what do you think of it?" Jim
cried, heartily, swinging her down from her
high seat, and kissing her as he did so.
"This is your home, my girl, and you are as
welcome to it as you would be to a palace,
if I could give it to you."

Annie put up her hands to hide the trem-
bling of her lips; and she let Jim see there
were tears in her eyes as an apology for not
replying. The young man with the red hair
took away the horses, and Jim, with his arm
around his wife's waist, ran toward the house
and threw open the door for her to enter.
The intense heat of two great stoves struck
in their faces; and Annie saw the big burner,
erected in all its black hideousness in the
middle of the front room, like a sort of
household hoodoo, to be constantly propi-
tiated, like the gods of Greece; and in the
kitchen, the new range, with a distracted
tea-kettle leaping on it, as if it would like
to loose its fetters and race away over the
prairie after its cousin, the locomotive.

It was a house of four rooms, and a
glance revealed the fact that it had been
provided with the necessaries.

"I think we can be very comfortable
here," said Jim, rather doubtfully.

Annie saw she must make some response.
"I am sure we can be more than comfort-
able, Jim," she replied. "We can be happy.
Show me, if you please, where my room
is. I must hang my cloak up in the right
place so that I shall feel as if I were getting
settled."

It was enough. Jim had no longer any
doubts. He felt sure they were going to be
happy ever afterward.

It was Annie who got the first meal; she
insisted on it, though both the men wanted
her to rest. And Jim hadn't the heart to
tell her that, as a general thing, it would
not do to put two eggs in the corn-cake,
and that the beefsteak was a great luxury.
When he saw her about to break an egg for
the coffee, however, he interfered.

"The shells of the ones you used for the
cake will settle the coffee just as well," he
said. "You see we have to be very careful
of eggs out here at this season."

"Oh! Will the shells really settle it?
This is what you must call prairie lore.
I suppose out here we find out what the
real relations of invention and necessity
are -- eh?"

Jim laughed disproportionately. He
thought her wonderfully witty. And he
and the help ate so much that Annie
opened her eyes. She had thought there
would be enough left for supper. But
there was nothing left.

For the next two weeks Jim was able to be
much with her; and they amused themselves
by decorating the house with the bright
curtainings that Annie had brought, and
putting up shelves for a few pieces of china.
She had two or three pictures, also, which
had come from her room in her old home,
and some of those useless dainty things with
which some women like to litter the room.

"Most folks," Jim explained, "have to be
content with one fire, and sit in the kitchen;
but I thought, as this was our honeymoon,
we would put on some lugs."

Annie said nothing then; but a day or
two after she ventured, --

"Perhaps it would be as well now, dear,
if we kept in the kitchen. I'll keep it as
bright and pleasant as I can. And, any-
way, you can be more about with me when
I'm working then. We'll lay a fire in the
front-room stove, so that we can light it if
anybody comes. We can just as well save
that much."

Jim looked up brightly. "All right," he
said. "You're a sensible little woman.
You see, every cent makes a difference.
And I want to be able to pay off five
hundred dollars of that mortgage this
year."

So, after that, they sat in the kitchen; and
the fire was laid in the front room, against
the coming of company. But no one came,
and it remained unlighted.

Then the season began to show signs of
opening, -- bleak signs, hardly recognizable
to Annie; and after that Jim was not much
in the house. The weeks wore on, and
spring came at last, dancing over the hills.
The ground-birds began building, and at
four each morning awoke Annie with their
sylvan opera. The creek that ran just at
the north of the house worked itself into a
fury and blustered along with much noise
toward the great Platte which, miles away,
wallowed in its vast sandy bed. The hills
flushed from brown to yellow, and from
mottled green to intensest emerald, and in
the superb air all the winds of heaven
seemed to meet and frolic with laughter
and song.

Sometimes the mornings were so beauti-
ful that, the men being afield and Annie all
alone, she gave herself up to an ecstasy and
kneeled by the little wooden bench outside
the door, to say, "Father, I thank Thee,"
and then went about her work with all the
poem of nature rhyming itself over and over
in her heart.

It was on such a day as this that Mrs.
Dundy kept her promise and came over to
see if the young housekeeper needed any of
the advice she had promised her. She had
walked, because none of the horses could be
spared. It had got so warm now that the
fire in the kitchen heated the whole house
sufficiently, and Annie had the rooms clean
to exquisiteness. Mrs. Dundy looked about
with envious eyes.

"How lovely!" she said.

"Do you think so?" cried Annie, in sur-
prise. "I like it, of course, because it is
home, but I don't see how you could call
anything here lovely."

"Oh, you don't understand," her visitor
went on. "It's lovely because it looks so
happy. Some of us have -- well, kind o'
lost our grip."

"It's easy to do that if you don't feel
well," Annie remarked sympathetically. "I
haven't felt as well as usual myself, lately.
And I do get lonesome and wonder what
good it does to fix up every day when there
is no one to see. But that is all nonsense,
and I put it out of my head."

She smoothed out the clean lawn apron
with delicate touch. Mrs. Dundy followed
the movement with her eyes.

"Oh, my dear," she cried, "you don't
know nothin' about it yet! But you will
know! You will!" and those restless, hot
eyes of hers seemed to grow more restless
and more hot as they looked with infinite
pity at the young woman before her.

Annie thought of these words often as the
summer came on, and the heat grew. Jim
was seldom to be seen now. He was up at
four each morning, and the last chore was
not completed till nine at night. Then he
threw himself in bed and lay there log-like
till dawn. He was too weary to talk much,
and Annie, with her heart aching for his
fatigue, forbore to speak to him. She
cooked the most strengthening things she
could, and tried always to look fresh and
pleasant when he came in. But she often
thought her pains were in vain, for he hardly
rested his sunburned eyes on her. His skin
got so brown that his face was strangely
changed, especially as he no longer had
time to shave, and had let a rough beard
straggle over his cheeks and chin. On
Sundays Annie would have liked to go to
church, but the horses were too tired to be
taken out, and she did not feel well enough
to walk far; besides, Jim got no particular
good out of walking over the hills unless
he had a plough in his hand.

Harvest came at length, and the crop was
good. There were any way from three to
twenty men at the house then, and Annie
cooked for all of them. Jim had tried to
get some one to help her, but he had not
succeeded. Annie strove to be brave, re-
membering that farm-women all over the
country were working in similar fashion.
But in spite of all she could do, the days
got to seem like nightmares, and sleep be-
tween was but a brief pause in which she was
always dreaming of water, and thinking that
she was stooping to put fevered lips to a
running brook. Some of these men were
very disgusting to Annie. Their manners
were as bad as they could well be, and a
coarse word came naturally to their lips.

"To be master of the soil, that is one
thing," said she to herself in sickness of
spirit; "but to be the slave of it is another.
These men seem to have got their souls all
covered with muck." She noticed that
they had no idea of amusement. They had
never played anything. They did not even
care for base-ball. Their idea of happiness
appeared to be to do nothing; and there was
a good part of the year in which they were
happy, -- for these were not for the most
part men owning farms; they were men
who hired out to help the farmer. A good
many of them had been farmers at one time
and another, but they had failed. They all
talked politics a great deal, -- politics and rail-
roads. Annie had not much patience with
it all. She had great confidence in the
course of things. She believed that in this
country all men have a fair chance. So
when it came about that the corn and the
wheat, which had been raised with such
incessant toil, brought them no money, but
only a loss, Annie stood aghast.

"I said the rates were ruinous," Jim said
to her one night, after it was all over, and
he had found out that the year's slavish
work had brought him a loss of three
hundred dollars; "it's been a conspiracy
from the first. The price of corn is all
right. But by the time we set it down in
Chicago we are out eighteen cents a bushel.
It means ruin. What are we going to do?
Here we had the best crop we've had for
years -- but what's the use of talking!
They have us in their grip."

"I don't see how it is," Annie protested.
"I should think it would be for the inter-
est of the roads to help the people to be as
prosperous as possible."

"Oh, we can't get out! And we're
bound to stay and raise grain. And they're
bound to cart it. And that's all there is to
it. They force us to stand every loss, even
to the shortage that is made in transportation.
The railroad companies own the elevators,
and they have the cinch on us. Our grain
is at their mercy. God knows how I'm
going to raise that interest. As for the five
hundred we were going to pay on the mort-
gage this year, Annie, we're not in it."

Autumn was well set in by this time, and
the brilliant cold sky hung over the prairies
as young and fresh as if the world were not
old and tired. Annie no longer could look
as trim as when she first came to the little
house. Her pretty wedding garments were
beginning to be worn and there was no
money for more. Jim would not play chess
now of evenings. He was forever writing
articles for the weekly paper in the adjoin-
ing town. They talked of running him for
the state legislature, and he was anxious
for the nomination.

"I think I might be able to stand it if I
could fight 'em!" he declared; "but to sit
here idle, knowing that I have been cheated
out of my year's work, just as much as if I
had been knocked down on the road and
the money taken from me, is enough to
send me to the asylum with a strait-jacket
on!"

Life grew to take on tragic aspects. Annie
used to find herself wondering if anywhere
in the world there were people with light
hearts. For her there was no longer antici-
pation of joy, or present companionship, or
any divertissement in the whole world. Jim
read books which she did not understand,
and with a few of his friends, who dropped
in now and then evenings or Sundays, talked
about these books in an excited manner.

She would go to her room to rest, and
lying there in the darkness on the bed,
would hear them speaking together, some-
times all at once, in those sternly vindictive
tones men use when there is revolt in their
souls.

"It is the government which is helping
to impoverish us," she would hear Jim
saying. "Work is money. That is to
say, it is the active form of money. The
wealth of a country is estimated by its
power of production. And its power of
production means work. It means there
are so many men with so much capacity.
Now the government owes it to these men
to have money enough to pay them for
their work; and if there is not enough
money in circulation to pay to each man for
his honest and necessary work, then I say
that government is in league with crime.
It is trying to make defaulters of us. It has
a hundred ways of cheating us. When I
bought this farm and put the mortgage on
it, a day's work would bring twice the
results it will now. That is to say, the
total at the end of the year showed my
profits to be twice what they would be
now, even if the railway did not stand in
the way to rob us of more than we earn.
So that it will take just twice as many
days' work now to pay off this mortgage
as it would have done at the time it was
contracted. It's a conspiracy, I tell you!
Those Eastern capitalists make a science of
ruining us."

He got more eloquent as time went on,
and Annie, who had known him first as
rather a careless talker, was astonished at
the boldness of his language. But conver-
sation was a lost art with him. He no
longer talked. He harangued.

In the early spring Annie's baby was
born, -- a little girl with a nervous cry, who
never slept long at a time, and who seemed
to wail merely from distaste at living. It
was Mrs. Dundy who came over to look
after the house till Annie got able to do so.
Her eyes had that fever in them, as ever.
She talked but little, but her touch on
Annie's head was more eloquent than words.
One day Annie asked for the glass, and
Mrs. Dundy gave it to her. She looked in
it a long time. The color was gone from
her cheeks, and about her mouth there was
an ugly tightening. But her eyes flashed
and shone with that same -- no, no, it could
not be that in her face also was coming the
look of half-madness! She motioned Mrs.
Dundy to come to her.

"You knew it was coming," she said,
brokenly, pointing to the reflection in the
glass. "That first day, you knew how it
would be."

Mrs. Dundy took the glass away with a
gentle hand.

"How could I help knowing?" she said
simply. She went into the next room, and
when she returned Annie noticed that the
handkerchief stuck in her belt was wet, as
if it had been wept on.

A woman cannot stay long away from
her home on a farm at planting time, even
if it is a case of life and death. Mrs. Dundy
had to go home, and Annie crept about
her work with the wailing baby in her arms.
The house was often disorderly now; but
it could not be helped. The baby had to
be cared for. It fretted so much that Jim
slept apart in the mow of the barn, that his
sleep might not be disturbed. It was a
pleasant, dim place, full of sweet scents, and
he liked to be there alone. Though he had
always been an unusual worker, he worked
now more like a man who was fighting off
fate, than a mere toiler for bread.

The corn came up beautifully, and far as
the eye could reach around their home it
tossed its broad green leaves with an ocean-
like swelling of sibilant sound. Jim loved
it with a sort of passion. Annie loved it,
too. Sometimes, at night, when her fatigue
was unbearable, and her irritation wearing
out both body and soul, she took her little
one in her arms and walked among the
corn, letting its rustling soothe the baby to
sleep.

The heat of the summer was terrible.
The sun came up in that blue sky like a
curse, and hung there till night came to
comfort the blistering earth. And one
morning a terrible thing happened. Annie
was standing out of doors in the shade of
those miserable little oaks, ironing, when
suddenly a blast of air struck her in the
face, which made her look up startled. For
a moment she thought, perhaps, there was
a fire near in the grass. But there was none.
Another blast came, hotter this time, and
fifteen minutes later that wind was sweep-
ing straight across the plain, burning and
blasting. Annie went in the house to finish
her ironing, and was working there, when
she heard Jim's footstep on the door-sill.
He could not pale because of the tan, but
there was a look of agony and of anger --
almost brutish anger -- in his eyes. Then
he looked, for a moment, at Annie standing
there working patiently, and rocking the
little crib with one foot, and he sat down on
the door-step and buried his face in his
brown arms.

The wind blew for three days. At the
end of that time every ear was withered in
the stalk. The corn crop was ruined.

But there were the other crops which
must be attended to, and Jim watched those
with the alertness of a despairing man; and
so harvest came again, and again the house
was filled with men who talked their careless
talk, and who were not ashamed to gorge
while this one woman cooked for them.
The baby lay on a quilt on the floor in the
coolest part of the kitchen. Annie fed it
irregularly. Sometimes she almost forgot
it. As for its wailing, she had grown so
used to it that she hardly heard it, any
more than she did the ticking of the clock.
And yet, tighter than anything else in life,
was the hold that little thing had on her
heart-strings. At night, after the intermin-
able work had been finished -- though in
slovenly fashion -- she would take it up and
caress it with fierceness, and worn as she
was, would bathe it and soothe it, and give
it warm milk from the big tin pail.

"Lay the child down," Jim would say
impatiently, while the men would tell how
their wives always put the babies on the
bed and let them cry if they wanted to.
Annie said nothing, but she hushed the
little one with tender songs.

One day, as usual, it lay on its quilt
while Annie worked. It was a terribly busy
morning. She had risen at four to get the
washing out of the way before the men got
on hand, and there were a dozen loaves of
bread to bake, and the meals to get, and
the milk to attend to, and the chickens and
pigs to feed. So occupied was she that she
never was able to tell how long she was
gone from the baby. She only knew that
the heat of her own body was so great that
the blood seemed to be pounding at her
ears, and she staggered as she crossed the
yard. But when she went at last with a
cup of milk to feed the little one, it lay with
clenched fists and fixed eyes, and as she
lifted it, a last convulsion laid it back breath-
less, and its heart had ceased to beat.

Annie ran with it to her room, and tried
such remedies as she had. But nothing
could keep the chill from creeping over the
wasted little form, -- not even the heat of
the day, not even the mother's agonized
embrace. Then, suddenly, Annie looked
at the clock. It was time to get the dinner.
She laid the piteous tiny shape straight on
the bed, threw a sheet over it, and went
back to the weltering kitchen to cook for
those men, who came at noon and who must
be fed -- who must be fed.

When they were all seated at the table,
Jim among them, and she had served them,
she said, standing at the head of the table,
with her hands on her hips: --

"I don't suppose any of you have time
to do anything about it; but I thought you
might like to know that the baby is dead.
I wouldn't think of asking you to spare the
horses, for I know they have to rest. But
I thought, if you could make out on a cold
supper, that I would go to the town for a
coffin."

There was satire in the voice that stung
even through the dull perceptions of these
men, and Jim arose with a cry and went to
the room where his dead baby lay.

About two months after this Annie in-
sisted that she must go home to Illinois.
Jim protested in a way.

"You know, I'd like to send you," he
said; "but I don't see where the money is
to come from. And since I've got this
nomination, I want to run as well as I can.
My friends expect me to do my best for
them. It's a duty, you know, and nothing
less, for a few men, like me, to get in the
legislature. We're going to get a railroad
bill through this session that will straighten
out a good many things. Be patient a little
longer, Annie."

"I want to go home," was the only reply
he got. "You must get the money, some
way, for me to go home with."

"I haven't paid a cent of interest yet,"
he cried angrily. "I don't see what you
mean by being so unreasonable!"

"You must get the money, some way,"
she reiterated.

He did not speak to her for a week, ex-
cept when he was obliged to. But she did
not seem to mind; and he gave her the
money. He took her to the train in the
little wagon that had met her when she first
came. At the station, some women were
gossiping excitedly, and Annie asked what
they were saying.

"It's Mis' Dundy," they said. "She's
been sent to th' insane asylum at Lincoln.
She's gone stark mad. All she said on the
way out was, 'Th' butter won't come! Th'
butter won't come!'" Then they laughed a
little -- a strange laugh; and Annie thought
of a drinking-song she had once heard,
"Here's to the next who dies."

Ten days after this Jim got a letter from
her. "I am never coming back, Jim," it
said. "It is hopeless. I don't think I
would mind standing still to be shot down
if there was any good in it. But I'm not
going back there to work harder than any
slave for those money-loaners and the rail-
roads. I guess they can all get along with-
out me. And I am sure I can get along
without them. I do not think this will make
you feel very bad. You haven't seemed
to notice me very much lately when I've
been around, and I do not think you will
notice very much when I am gone. I know
what this means. I know I am breaking
my word when I leave you. But remember,
it is not you I leave, but the soil, Jim! I
will not be its slave any longer. If you
care to come for me here, and live another
life -- but no, there would be no use. Our
love, like our toil, has been eaten up by
those rapacious acres. Let us say good-
by."

Jim sat all night with this letter in his
hand. Sometimes he dozed heavily in his
chair. But he did not go to bed; and the
next morning he hitched up his horses and
rode to town. He went to the bank which
held his notes.

"I'll confess judgment as soon as you
like," he said. "It's all up with me."

It was done as quickly as the law would
allow. And the things in the house were
sold by auction. All the farmers were there
with their wives. It made quite an outing
for them. Jim moved around impassively,
and chatted, now and then, with some of
the men about what the horses ought to
bring.

The auctioneer was a clever fellow. Be-
tween the putting up of the articles, he sang
comic songs, and the funnier the song, the
livelier the bidding that followed. The
horses brought a decent price, and the ma-
chinery a disappointing one; and then, after
a delicious snatch about Nell who rode the
sway-backed mare at the county fair, he
got down to the furniture, -- the furniture
which Jim had bought when he was expect-
ing Annie.

Jim was walking around with his hands
in his pockets, looking unconcerned, and,
as the furniture began to go off, he came
and sat down in the midst of it. Every
one noticed his indifference. Some of them
said that after all he couldn't have been
very ambitious. He didn't seem to take
his failure much to heart. Every one was
concentrating attention on the cooking-
stove, when Jim leaned forward, quickly,
over a little wicker work-stand.

There was a bit of unfinished sewing there,
and it fell out as he lifted the cover. It was
a baby's linen shirt. Jim let it lie, and then
lifted from its receptacle a silver thimble.
He put it in his vest-pocket.

The campaign came on shortly after this,
and Jim Lancy was defeated. "I'm going
to Omaha," said he to the station-master,
"and I've got just enough to buy a ticket
with. There's a kind of satisfaction in giv-
ing the last cent I have to the railroads."

Two months later, a "plain drunk" was
registered at the station in Nebraska's me-
tropolis. When they searched him they
found nothing in his pockets but a silver
thimble, and Joe Benson, the policeman
who had brought in the "drunk," gave it
to the matron, with his compliments. But
she, when no one noticed, went softly to
where the man was sleeping, and slipped
it back into his pocket, with a sigh. For
she knew somehow -- as women do know
things -- that he had not stolen that thimble.

-THE END-
Elia W. Peattie's short story: Jim Lancy's Waterloo

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