HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 203 



it's not easy for an outsider to understand. 

 His death hurt her terribly. He wasn't her 

 support, he didn't contribute the meal and 

 meat she ate ; but in a way he helped her to get 

 her living. Up to the time of his taking off, 

 he and she were used to working together in 

 the woods, at either end of a crosscut saw, cut- 

 ting firewood at so much a "rick." Jake would 

 find the jobs and then let his mother take a 

 hand. She is still able to swing a heavy dou- 

 ble-bitted ax like a veteran woodsman. I'm 

 afraid she's going to miss Jake more than she 

 knows. It isn't every man who's willing to 

 hunt up work for so old a woman, even if she 

 happens to be his mother. 



When she came down this morning she car- 

 ried clutched in her lean hand a little wad of 

 feathers crumpled and twisted together in a 

 loose sort of rope. She was excited and eager 

 when she held this out to let us see. 



"That thar's Jake's crown!" she said in a 

 kind of elated awe. "Yist'day I ripped open 

 the piller he used to sleep on, an' I found thish- 

 yere, jest like I'm a-showin' it to you. Hit's 

 a shore sign Jake's gone to Heaven an' is 

 a-wearin' a crown up Yonder. My ol' Mammy 

 tol* me that, an' she was a heap older woman 



