“Is it due?”

“It’s been due a year an’ if I have to pay that note I’ll be short my interest.”

“God o’ Israel!  I’m scairt,” said Barnes.

Down crashed the stick of wood into the box.

“What about?”

Mr. Barnes tackled a nail that stuck out of the woodwork and tried to pull it between his thumb and finger while I watched the process with growing interest.

“It would be like him to put the screws on you now,” he grunted, pulling at the nail.  “You’ve got between him an’ his prey.  You’ve taken the mouse away from the cat.”

I remember the little panic that fell on us then.  I could see tears in the eyes of Aunt Deel as she sat with her head leaning wearily on her hand.

“If he does I’ll do all I can,” said Barnes, “whatever I’ve got will be yours.”

The nail came out of the wall.

“I had enough saved to pay off the mortgage,” my uncle answered.  “I suppose it’ll have to go for the note.”

Mr. Barnes’ head was up among the dried apples on the ceiling.  A movement of his hand broke a string of them.  Then he dropped his huge bulk into a chair which crashed to the floor beneath him.  He rose blushing and said: 

“I guess I better go or I’ll break everything you’ve got here.  I kind o’ feel that way.”

Rodney Barnes left us.

I remember how Uncle Peabody stood in the middle of the floor and whistled the merriest tune he knew.

“Stand right up here,” he called in his most cheerful tone.  “Stand right up here before me, both o’ ye.”

I got Aunt Deel by the hand and led her toward my uncle.  We stood facing him.  “Stand straighter,” he demanded.  “Now, altogether.  One, two, three, ready, sing.”

He beat time with his hand in imitation of the singing master at the schoolhouse and we joined him in singing an old tune which began:  “O keep my heart from sadness, God.”

This irresistible spirit of the man bridged a bad hour and got us off to bed in fairly good condition.

A few days later the note came due and its owner insisted upon full payment.  There was such a clamor for money those days!  I remember that my aunt had sixty dollars which she had saved, little by little, by selling eggs and chickens.  She had planned to use it to buy a tombstone for her mother and father—­a long-cherished ambition.  My uncle needed the most of it to help pay the note.  We drove to Potsdam on that sad errand and what a time we had getting there and back in deep mud and sand and jolting over corduroys!

“Bart,” my uncle said the next evening, as I took down the book to read.  “I guess we’d better talk things over a little to-night.  These are hard times.  If we can find anybody with money enough to buy ’em I dunno but we better sell the sheep.”

“If you hadn’t been a fool,” my aunt exclaimed with a look of great distress—­“ayes! if you hadn’t been a fool.”