An intuition flashed into Pap Overholt's mind. He grasped his wife's arm.
"W'y, Cornely," he cried, "hit's that cabin on The Bench! Don't ye know,
honey? I give him that land when he was sixteen year old,--time he brung
the prize home from the school down in the settlemint."

"The Bench! Oh, Lord--The Bench! W'y, hit 'll be the death of her. John, we
cain't git to her too quick." And she ran from cupboard to press, from
press to chest, from chest to bureau drawer, piling into John's arms the
flask of brandy, the homely medicines, the warm garments, such bits of food
as she could catch up that were palatable and portable. Pap, with more
vulnerable emotions and less resolute nature, was incapable of speech; he
could only suffer dumbly.

Arrived at the abandoned cabin on The Bench, the picture that greeted them
crushed Pap's soft heart to powder, but roused in Aunt Cornelia a rage that
would have resulted in a sharp settlement with Sammy, had it not been that,
now as always, to reach the offender a blow must go through that same
pitiful heart of John's. The young people had not long been at the cabin
when the parents arrived. The little Huldy, moaning piteously, with a
stricken, terrified look in her big, childish eyes, was crouched upon the
floor beside a rickety chair. Sammy, sullen and defiant, was at the
desolate hearth, fumbling with unskilled hands at the sodden chunks of wood
he had there gathered.

The situation was past words. Pap, after one look at Huldy, went about the
fire-building, the slow tears rolling down his cheeks. While Aunt Cornelia
brought the bedding, the warm blankets and wrappings, and made the little
suffering creature a comfortable couch, Pap wrought at the forlorn, gaping
fireplace like a suffering giant. When the leaping flames danced and
shouted up the chimney till the whole cabin was filled with the physical