Mrs. Motherwell buried her face in her hands.

“Oh God be merciful, be merciful,” she sobbed.

Sam Motherwell, knowing nothing of the storm that was passing through his wife’s mind, was out in the machine house tightening up the screws and bolts in the binders, getting ready for the harvest.  The barley was whitening already.

The nurse’s letter had disturbed him.  He tried to laugh at himself—­the idea of his boxing up those weeds to send to anybody.  Still the nurse had said how pleased Polly was.  By George, it is strange what will please people.  He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he was coming back.  Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead.  And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her yet, how she ran after the colt the day it broke out of the pasture, and when the men were away she would hitch up a horse for him as quick as anybody.

“I kind o’ wish now that I had given her something—­it would have pleased her so—­some little thing,” he added hastily.

Mrs. Motherwell came across the yard bareheaded.

“Come into the house, Sam,” she said gently.  “I want to show you something.”

He looked up quickly, but saw something in his wife’s face that prevented him from speaking.

He followed her into the house.  The letters were on the table, Mrs. Motherwell read them to him, read them with tears that almost choked her utterance.

“And Polly’s dead, Sam!” she cried when she had finished the last one.  “Polly’s dead, and the poor old mother will be looking, looking for that money, and it will never come.  Sam, can’t we save that poor old woman from the poorhouse?  Do you remember what the girl said in the letter, ’Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my little ones, ye have done it unto Me?’ We didn’t deserve the praise the girl gave us.  We didn’t send the flowers, we have never done anything for anybody and we have plenty, plenty, and what is the good of it, Sam?  We’ll die some day and leave it all behind us.”

Mrs. Motherwell hid her face in her apron, trembling with excitement.  Sam’s face was immovable, but a mysterious Something, not of earth, was struggling with him.  Was it the faith of that decrepit old woman in that bare little room across the sea, mumbling to herself that God had not forgotten?  God knows.  His ear is not dulled; His arm is not shortened; His holy spirit moves mightily.

Sam Motherwell stood up and struck the table with his fist.

“Ettie,” he said, “I am a hard man, a danged hard man, and as you say I’ve never given away much, but I am not so low down yet that I have to reach up to touch bottom, and the old woman will not go to the poor house if I have money enough to keep her out!”