CHAPTER IX.

REBELLION.


But the poor, perhaps fortunately, have little time for mourning. As the
first hint of the long winter came in on the September's equinox, poor
Sara had to rouse herself, and she began to look about her with
despairing eyes. Friends, so far, had been most kind, and the little
family had never actually suffered; but now that the few summer
resources for picking up an occasional dollar were ended, what had they
to look forward to in the long months to come?

Reuben Olmstead had owned the poor little cottage in which they lived,
so a roof over their heads might be counted on, but not much besides;
for his share in the last fishing-expedition, promptly paid over by
Jasper, had soon been swallowed up by the family's needs, so greatly
reduced had they become before it arrived.

Sara was not, perhaps, a good financier,--few girls of barely eighteen
are,--but she had done her best, and her feeling had often been that of
a mother-bird, wearied by a long day's search for worms, who always
finds the mouths stretched wide as ever, clamoring for more. The task of
filling those mouths seemed a hopeless one.

"What can I do?" she thought, as she sat huddled over the tiny fire one
day, waiting for the children to come home from school. "The flour is
all gone, and the potatoes nearly, and so little wood!"