had stood him in good stead.

"Take the book," she said. "Read, John, in this hour of affliction;
it brings comfort."

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