idly, "maybe it's fer the best-seems as if it'd a kilt me to use that money of Maw's-an' anyway, there ain't no need. When I went to Walnut yistiddy it was partly for her. I told you I had a plan. You know how much money ball players make-perfessionals, I mean? Well, Bill Summers knowed for certain the manager from Dallas was goin' to be there, -said the Dallas team was out for a pitcher. I figgered if I could git on one of the big teams it'd put me an' her on easy street-an' I fin'ly let Bill persuade me to go. Well, it was just like he said. The Dallas man got me to sign a contrack to pitch for 'em this season. When you told me about Maw an' the money I didn't mean to say nothin' about this but just go on an' do as near like she wanted as I could. But now there ain't no money, it's different, ain't it? I could save enough in a year for two years' schoolin'."

"Yes, but Tom, would you?"

"Before God, I will, Miz Murray!"

But Mrs. Murray, reader of hearts, looking into the boyish face, grief-sharpened into lines of determination, was not so sure. Again her troubled eyes implored the peaceful face across the room.

"A baseball player," she muttered, "A Sunday baseball player-when she wanted-"

"What did you say, Miz Murray?"

"Nothin', Tom, nothin'. You go to the kitchen an' let Miz McGregor give you a cup of coffee."

He left Mrs. Murray standing motionless in the middle of the sun-brightened room, looking down at the empty tin box in her hand.

S

NATALKA'S PORTION *

BY ROSE COHEN

ABINKA lay buried in snow.

The hills, the

forest, the lake, all lay hard, white, glittering, and the air also glittered and stung and cut. Toward the village, the two rows of huts looked small, insignificant, mere specks of time-grayed timber weighed down with snow. Over each speck a thread of smoke rose, going straight up into the still, glittering air. Within, doors and windows sealed, the peasants huddled for warmth, here and there, together with their animals, to keep them alive, or for the life that they could give. In the chimneyless huts even the smoke was kept in for the warmth it gave. It poured from the oven into the room and hung there from the ceiling. Beneath it the peasants went about, bodies bent to the ground. When at last the smoke settled on ceiling and walls they still went about bent, from habit now, and peering with weakened eyes.

Birds

Then Winter ended! Suddenly, as if it spent itself in its own cruelty, it ended. The sun came out warm. From the ragged straw roofs of the huts the snow slipped, and melted and fell in a thick shower. appeared. The peasants came out to look at their fields. Their faces were sallow and pinched, and the smoke soaked into the skin showed plainer in the strong light.

* From Pictorial Review. Copyright, 1922, by Pictorial Review Company.

The snow blackened with every moment, and suddenly the earth lay bare. The men began to scatter over the fields. The women tended nearer home.

One afternoon, when the air was sweet with the warmth and the moisture of the earth, and in the pastures about the village Sabinka a tint of green showed faintly, Katherina came to her husband, Gavrelo, where he was mending the fence around the field to be planted with wheat.

"Gavrelo," she said, "I have come to plead with you again about the marriage portion of our daughter Natalka." She stood meekly, a clumsy little body in a red plaid shawl. Her face was steaming with heat and perspiration, and her worn birch-bark sandals were clogged with earth from the soggy fields.

Gavrelo had not looked up when she had been coming to him through the fields. And now it was as if she were not there. Near him lay a pile of poles, a heap of freshly cut twigs, and a hatchet. He selected a long, pliant twig and began twisting it in and out between two poles as a bar-rest. His face was sullen. He was short and wide and brown; his thick hair and beard, and worn homespun clothes, and his weather-beaten skin were all brown. He was like the powerful trees about him, and, like these deeprooted trees, he looked as capable of being moved.

Katherina turned her eyes away from him. It crushed her to see him so. It had always crushed her-even so long ago when he used to come to court her at her father's house-the way he would sit there of a Sunday, sullen, silent, never a kind word, never a smile, contrary, scowling at the whole world.

"Gavrelo," she repeated her sentences in a way

peculiar to the people of Sabinka, "I have come to plead with you about Natalka's marriage portion." Her voice was full of restrained passion.

"Look, Gavrelo, at your home." She pointed to a hut across the great field. In one of the two dingy windows a young girl could be seen, though vaguely, at a spinning-board.

"There is your home. Moldy and rotten, it is sinking to the ground. You were supposed to have built twenty years ago, soon after we were married. All you have built are barns. There they stand, shaming your house. And there is your daughter, as pretty as the prettiest in Sabinka, in that rotting home. Yet, Gavrelo, have I ever pestered you about it? But now it is about Natalka that I beg you." Her clumsy little body leaned toward him. But her voice became more patient, more restrained.

"Gavrelko!" She used the diminutive, and then stood dumbly looking down for a moment. Yes, she could have cared for him if he had let her. "Gavrelko, you are not going to send Natalka away without a portion to her husband's home, a strange home in a strange village! You are not going to do it!"

Dumb and silent, Gavrelo's scowl never relaxed. It was always so, always-except-when he stood looking at his fields-at his wheat. Then his furrowed face smoothed and the light in his eyes reflected the light in the fields.

Gavrelo now selected a long pole, sharpened it, and began driving it into the ground. "Hagh!" his breath echoed, and the pole sank deep into the earth. "And you have so much, Gavrelo." She glanced about.

Their hut stood a good distance away from the

village, and all surrounding it was Gavrelo's.

"All that, all about us is yours, and your barns are stacked with wheat. You will not send Natalka away with empty hands." Her own clasped in agony. "You won't do it. I know, Gavrelo, how bitter it is to come with empty hands." Her head drooped, her

voice sank low.

"I know how it is. I came to your home, Gavrelo, without a portion. My people were very poor. You have never thrown it up to me, Gavrelo, but your mother cast it in my face every day as long as she lived. And I was never able to lift my head."

Gavrelo's face was turned from her, and he worked on steadily.

"And Natalka, too, is marrying into a large family. It is perhaps a disadvantage to marry into a large family. There are so many to find fault with your ways, a mother-in-law and sisters-in-law and brothersin-law. All watching and criticising you. And when you have come without a portion-Ach! Gavrelko! They will throw it up to her, the mother-in-law and the sisters-in-law-and-and even Simyonka-Simyonka is a fine fellow. And yet-in a quarrel-would he not remember?" She began to weep passionately. "You won't do it, Gavrelo. And Natalka has really earned it. You know how she can spin and weave. Her cloth is straight and fine. And during the harvest she has been among the quickest hands. You won't bring this shame upon her, Gavrelo!"

Gavrelo turned to her. At last she had touched him. His face was distorted with anger and he stopped his work for a moment. "Why does she want to marry, the fool!" The words burst from him