"Is the barley turning yellow any?" queried the sick man feebly.
Nancy hesitated.
"Oh, not to speak of," she faltered, swallowing hard.
Her husband was used to that gulping sob in her voice when she stood in the door. There was a little grave on the edge of the barley-field. He had put a bit of woven-wire fence about it to keep out the rabbits, and Nancy had planted some geraniums inside the small inclosure. There were some of the fiery blossoms in an old oyster can at the head of the little mound, lifting their brilliant smile toward the unfeeling blue of the sky.
"There's pretty certain to be late rains, anyway," the man went on hoarsely. "Leech would let us have more seed if it wasn't for the mortgage." His voice broke into a strained whisper on the last word.
Nancy crossed the room, and laid her knotted hand on his forehead.
"You hain't got any fever to-day," she said irrelevantly.
"Oh, no; I'm gettin' on fine; I'll be up in a day or two. The mortgage'll be due next month, Nancy," he went on, looking down at his thin gray hands on the worn coverlet; "I calc'lated they'd hold off till harvest, if the crop was comin' on all right." He glanced up at her anxiously.
The woman's careworn face worked in a cruel convulsive effort at self-control.
"It ain't right, Robert!" she broke out fiercely. "You've paid more'n the place is worth now; if they take it for what's back, it ain't right!"