by long, hot days in the hay-field, and in the autumn by back-breaking hours in the potato-patch. She had had no ambition, no goal, no reason for living, but her decision of the hour before had changed the whole aspect of her life. Now she had an ambition, something to strive toward, something that she could not even whisper in her prayers.

It was to be her great secret, and it should not be told until that glorious day when she saw Jimmy getting his diploma from the village high school. Then she would tell him tell him of her struggles, her hopes, and her aspirations, and he would take the money to go to the big city to college. She pictured it all while she was gazing at the steaming tea-kettle. It almost seemed as if the steam were taking shape, showing her the scenes as they would take place.

This dreaming must stop. Ira would soon be coming back with the milk, and she must have the pans ready. She was going to take unusual pains with her butter from now on, as she saw a way in which she could take the money she needed from that source.

She went peddling in the village once a week. Her rickety, muddy wagon and ambling white mare were a familiar sight to the villagers. She could drive a harder bargain than Ira, and he knew it, so she always took the produce to market. But he weighed and measured everything carefully, and she had to give him an account of every pennyworth that she sold, and she had never dared to spend a cent without first asking his permission.

She was

and

going to make better butter

get higher prices; but Ira was not to know of the extra charges. That money was to be hers and Jimmy's. In the winter she could make two dollars or more every peddling day by selling butter, milk, eggs, and apples; but in the summer, when green corn, raspberries, and potatoes were in season, she could save- She shut her eyes, not daring to dream her dream longer. It seemed too big, too wonderful, almost as if it were to be shattered before it began

to materialize.

"Open the door, won't yer?" Ira's muffled voice demanded.

She hastened toward the door, and let in the big man, who was covered with half-melted snow. Two pails were full of foaming milk, but the third was empty. Martha took the two pails from him, and looked questioningly at the empty pail.

"This cold weather is dryin' them up somethin' fierce," was his only comment.

She started to strain the milk into the pans. He stood beside the stove and watched her lift the heavy pails. Her silence angered him.

"Whar 's Jimmy?" he asked.
"Sleepin'," was her brief retort.

"Sleepin'!" he sneered. "Yer a fine ma to be talkin' all about new-fangled edication, an' lettin' the boy sleep. Sleepin' warm and comfortable, while I 'm out slavin' in the cold. Is that all yer think of me? I suppose yer think yer 'll make one of them gentlemen out of him by lettin' him lie in bed and grow lazy." The man strode toward the next room. He went over to the sleeping boy and shook him almost ferociously. Jimmy woke up with a start.

"Stop shakin' me, Pa. I'll git up. It hain't terrible late, be it?" The little boy seemed like one pleading for his life.

"Yer better be gettin' up, or I'll give yer worse next time I ketch yer sleepin' late. I hain't runnin' no dudes' establishment." The man's tones were surly.

The room was very cold, but Jimmy looked at the back of the big man as it blocked the door-frame, and resolutely got up to dress.

Martha heard the the encounter only vaguely. The empty milk-pail stared at her; it almost seemed to mock her. It seemed to say, "I hain't goin' ter let yer save no money"; but she put aside the fancy, and went on with her work.

The storm had let up, and a dazzling sun lighted the whole white landscape. Great drifts were heaped up here and there, giving the low, rolling country a sort of hummocky appearance. Martha looked out of her prison window. Was there anything more desolately beautiful

than the white world that surrounded her cell? If she had been sentenced by a judge, she could n't have been a closer prisoner.

She had thought of this many times, but to-day it did n't seem so horrible. In fact, she felt that a bit of beauty existed in the landscape. If only the third milkpail had been full.

Tuesday she went peddling. The white mare was hitched to the yellow pung. She almost enjoyed the trip, which before had always been a curse. Perhaps by to-night she would have the beginning of the fund that would make Jimmy's wife free from such a humiliating task as peddling. The women of the village looked on her as the farmer's wife that brought them butter.

When she was young, the attitude of the village women hurt her. She longed for companionship, she wanted friends among the villagers; their life seemed broad in comparison with hers on the farm with her man. Now that she had become used to being an outsider, she thought no more of it. But her boy's wife was to be one in a throng, not in a country village, but in the city.

She drove her bargains as she had never driven them before. She had sold everything that she had taken to town with her. In the grocery store she had multiplied, divided, and added in her crabbed, cramped figures. Now a new one-dollar bill lay close to her heart. It had been slipped there furtively as she was driving through a long stretch of wood. The third milk-pail had mocked in vain.

She counted the money from the worn leather purse into Ira's outstretched hand. She told him of her expenditures, and then held her breath while he figured the two columns. Had she made a mistake? She had lied to him without flinching, the first lie that she had ever told. She was surprised how easy it all had been.

He pushed his pencil from him. She did n't even dare look, but his grouchy silence told her that she had figured correctly in the village. She breathed a The one-dollar bill felt warm prayer. against her breast.

While Ira was in the barn milking, she took the money from her dress. On the top shelf in the cupboard stood a luster pitcher that had belonged to her greatgrandmother. She never used it; so the money would be safe there until she could finally decide on a hiding-place.

Spring came. The roads were even more impassable than usual, but Martha gladly guided the rickety old wagon through the sea of mud, for every peddling day some new bit of money found its way into the pitcher. Sometimes it was only fifty cents, sometimes two dollars, but every penny she guarded with the jealousy of a miser. Often when Jimmy was at school and Ira was busy in the barn, she would take down the pitcher and count her treasure. She knew the date on every bill and coin. They were almost human, almost like friends.

Jimmy was growing fast into a sturdy boy. He received high marks, and the day that the district school closed, the teacher had come to tell her good things about her lad. For a second she thought of telling her secret to the girl, but something stopped her, perhaps years of accustomed suppression.

The summer came, and then the autumn, and the sum in the pitcher was growing so large that it worried her. Suppose either Jimmy or his father should find it? She decided to put it in the bank. It would be safe there. Ira did n't believe in banks. His grandfather had lost some money once when a bank had failed; but she would take that risk rather than have Ira discover her treasure.

One by one she took the coins and bills from the pitcher. She tied the little fortune into a handkerchief and thrust it into her blouse.

Martha gave her small packet to the clean-shaven, dark-haired man behind the little cage at the bank. She asked him timidly if it was secure. He had been so courteous and reassuring that she felt real relief when he put the contents of her package in the neat compartments of the cash drawer. He wrote something in a book and gave it to her. She stared at it

dumbly when the cashier explained its use. She turned white. The money had better be in the pitcher. It was easier to hide than the awkwardly shaped leaflet. "Ken I leave this here book with yer?

Won't it be safe?" she questioned timidly.

The clerk took the book, assured her of its safety, and she went home content. She felt a relief that she had not known since the fund had started in the pitcher.

She missed her money. Frequently she would take down the empty receptacle, and look into it expectantly, but nothing but the pink-tinted lining greeted her gaze.

But as the days grew longer, she found that she had very little time for dreaming. First there was planting, and then, as the season advanced, everything began to happen at once. The haying was in process, the garden had to be hoed, the wild berries were in season, and the hired men had to be fed; but she worked with a will, for the sum in the bank was growing.

She

Ira and she had never spoken further of the boy's education; he evidently considered the matter finally decided. was glad; it made it easier for her. Another winter came, and the storms howled and the snow drifted in great hills about the house, but she no longer felt a prisoner. Ira had almost gone out of her life.

To be sure, he was there. She fed him, mended his clothes, and slept in his bed; but in her thoughts he no longer existed. She had only two companions, her son and the precise little column in the bank-book. The figures in black ink, how well she knew them!

Jimmy was fourteen. It hardly seemed possible, and yet as Martha watched him in the field as he swung the haycocks up to the load, he seemed more of a man than his father. Only a few more years to wait and Jimmy would be coming back to her from the city clad not in ragged blue denim overalls, but in store-made clothes such as she had seen pictured in the mail-order catalogues.

She thought of the bank, the shrine to which she made a weekly pilgrimage. The years had been hard ones for her. Sometimes the little figures at the bank had totaled the same for weeks at a time. There had been a dry season when the crops had failed, and when the cows had stopped yielding the creamy milk that made her butter the best on the countryside. There had been a wet season when the potatoes had rotted in the ground. Yet, despite it all, the sum had grown.

And she had kept her secret. There

had been times when she had been on the verge of telling about her treasure. When the taxes were overdue, and there was no money to pay them, she felt like a thief, but she was stealing for her boy. When Jimmy was discouraged with his lessons she felt like putting her arms about him and telling him of the brilliant future that she was planning for him. But her fears that Ira would find out about her hopes kept her from talking with Jimmy.

He had been graduated from the district school in June. He had received the highest marks that the teacher had awarded to any of her class. How proud she was of that last report-card! She kept it behind the clock on the mantel, so that she could handle it often.

In the autumn Jimmy was going to the village high school. She had never spoken to Ira about the matter since the stormy night five years before. She had just told herself this day after day, week after week, and year after year, since the child had first lain close against her breast. She was dreading her encounter with Ira. What would she do if he flatly refused to let Jimmy go to the village school? With a shudder she always put. the thought from her, and she murmured a silent prayer that she would be given power to overcome the opposition.

The summer went quickly, too quickly for Martha, as every sunrise meant a day nearer to an approaching doom. She felt almost as one sentenced to death waiting day after day for the sound of the hangman's key grating in the lock.

There were only three days left now before the opening of the high school. She must tell Jimmy; he must know before his father. She called him from the potato-patch on the pretext that she wanted a pail of water. He came running to her so full of life and strength that she hardy knew how to tell him of her great desire.

"I hain't wantin' no water, Jimmy. I jest want er talk, that's all." She looked steadily at the big, black knothole in the pine floor. "Ye 're goin' ter high school Monday."

The boy looked at her almost stunned for a moment, and then he smiled joyfully.

"Do yer mean it, Ma?" he questioned. "Yes," she answered shortly.

The boy, always stoical and undemonstrative, put his arms around her and kissed her. Martha never forgot that kiss; it thrilled her like the kiss of a lover. "Does Pa know?" he asked as he awkwardly dropped his arms.

"No, and he won't like it, neither; but don't yer care. We'll try and fix it all right. Yer can't have no new clothes right off; ken yer stand goin' in what yer got?" She knew that Ira would not let her have money to buy suitable clothes for the boy, and to buy them out of her own savings would give away the secret. Should n't she tell Jimmy now about the college and about her plan? No, it would take too long, and Ira would become impatient.

"I don't care nothin' about clothes; I cal'late I can earn some once I git started in the village." He looked at his mother shyly for a second. He wanted to thank her, but he could find no words. He dropped his eyes to the pine floor. "Say, Ma, ye 're real good," he said shortly, and ran toward the field.

She looked after him proudly. So he wanted to go to high school; he, too, wanted an education as badly as she wanted him to have one. He had been a silent lad; he had never confided in her. But he had kissed her. Now she regretted the years that she had quelled her impulses to fondle the boy. Something within her had always kept her back. Never once had she petted him, never once had she told him of her pride. Somehow that kiss had told her that he understood.

Monday morning Martha packed the dinner-pail for Jimmy. He was to walk to the village to school, as the three miles each way meant nothing to the boy who had roamed the field and forest all his life. But Ira had not been told. He was in the barn milking, and Jimmy was pitching hay from the loft. She looked at the dull autumn landscape, just touched

by the light of dawn. She saw the brown leaves as they swirled on the ground. Deliberately she turned from the window. and put the dinner-pail on the table where Ira would see it when he first returned from the barn. She poked the fire. The day seemed unusually cold.

Ira came in. He set the pails on the floor by the sink. Then he slunk into his chair at the table, where the breakfast was laid. Martha shivered. She wished Jimmy would hurry and come in. She heard him at the end of the shed; now he was opening the kitchen door. Thank Heaven he had got there before his father had spoken! Now that the hangman's noose was dangling, she could n't bear to go through the ordeal alone.

"What's that pail fer? I hain't goin' nowheres ter-day," Ira said. His tone

was almost a growl. For a second there was silence; then Martha threw back her shoulders. Why should she fear him, why should she let this grouchy beast stand between her son and the great world?

"Jimmy 's goin' ter start high school this mornin'," she said so quietly that she feared her own calmness.

The man started up as one struck, and faced his wife with his hands tightly clenched at his side. His lips were livid, his eyes were burning balls; and yet as Martha looked at him she never flinched.

"He hain't goin' ter do no sech thing. He 's hed all the schoolin' he needs. Hain't he through at deestrict? Hain't I told yer he wa' n't goin' ter hev no more edication? Hain't I?" He raised his hand to strike her.

Jimmy rushed forward and clutched his father's hand. Haying, plowing, and the lifting of heavy barrels had given him the strength and muscle of a man. He was stronger than his father, for he was lithe, and every sinew knew its duty. Before Ira had a chance to recover, Jimmy grasped the other hand. For a moment he held both his father's hands close to his sides. He looked straight into the eyes red with anger.

"Pa, I'm goin' to high school; yer can't stop me. Ma wants I should go,