packed and took therefrom an account book and pencil.

"They're your father's," she said, "but it's a good use I'll be puttin'
'em to."

Writing was, for the hand otherwise capable, a laborious task; but no
help would she have from either of her sons.

"May I ask you not to be spakin'?" she said politely to the two. "It's
not used to writin' I am, and I must be thinkin' besides."

Two hours she sat there, her boys glancing curiously at her now and then
at first, and later falling into a doze in their chairs. She wrote two
words and stopped. Over and over she wrote two words and stopped. Over
and over until she had written two words and stopped fifty times. And
often she wiped away her tears. At last her task was done, and there in
the book, the letters misshapen and some of the words misspelled, were
the names of all who had come to her that morning. Just fifty there were
of them. She read them over carefully to see that she had not forgotten
any.

"Maybe I'll be havin' the chance to do 'em a good turn some day," she
said. "I will, if I can. But whether I do or not, I've got it here in
writin', that when all was gone, and I didn't have nothin', the Lord
sint fifty friends to help me out. Let me be gettin' down in the heart
and discouraged again, and I'll take this book and read the Lord's
doin's for me. Come Pat and Moike! It's to bed you must be goin', for
we're to move to-morrow, do you moind?"