The farmer took from her hand the well-worn copy of Euclid’s Elements, and laying aside his hat with reverence, he read aloud:  “The angles at the base of an isoceles triangle are equal, and whosoever shall produce the sides, lo, the same also shall be equal each unto each.”

The farmer put the book aside.

“It’s no use, Anna.  I can’t read the good words to-night.”

He rose, staggered to the crock of buttermilk, and before his wife could stay his hand, drained it to the last drop.

Then he sank heavily to his chair.

“Let them foreclose it, if they will,” he said; “I am past caring.”

The woman looked sadly into the fire.

Ah, if only her son Henry had been here.  Henry, who had left them three years agone, and whose bright letters still brought from time to time the gleam of hope to the stricken farmhouse.

Henry was in Sing Sing.  His letters brought news to his mother of his steady success; first in the baseball nine of the prison, a favourite with his wardens and the chaplain, the best bridge player of the corridor.  Henry was pushing his way to the front with the old-time spirit of the Enderbys.

His mother had hoped that he might have been with her at Xmas, but Henry had written that it was practically impossible for him to leave Sing Sing.  He could not see his way out.  The authorities were arranging a dance and sleighing party for the Xmas celebration.  He had some hope, he said, of slipping away unnoticed, but his doing so might excite attention.

Of the trouble at home Anna had told her son nothing.

No, Henry could not come.  There was no help there.  And William, the other son, ten years older than Henry.  Alas, William had gone forth from the homestead to fight his way in the great city!  “Mother,” he had said, “when I make a million dollars I’ll come home.  Till then good-bye,” and he had gone.

How Anna’s heart had beat for him.  Would he make that million dollars?  Would she ever live to see it?  And as the years passed she and John had often sat in the evenings picturing William at home again, bringing with him a million dollars, or picturing the million dollars sent by express with love.  But the years had passed.  William came not.  He did not come.  The great city had swallowed him up as it has many another lad from the old homestead.

Anna started from her musing—­

What was that at the door?  The sound of a soft and timid rapping, and through the glass of the door-pane, a face, a woman’s face looking into the fire-lit room with pleading eyes.  What was it she bore in her arms, the little bundle that she held tight to her breast to shield it from the falling snow?  Can you guess, reader?  Try three guesses and see.  Right you are.  That’s what it was.

The farmer’s wife went hastily to the door.

“Lord’s mercy!” she cried, “what are you doing out on such a night?  Come in, child, to the fire!”