On a ride one day he stopped for a drink at a spring in a grove of maples surrounding a desolate farmhouse not more than a mile away from his own.

And through the trees as he turned to go he saw the stark figure of a woman, poorly clad and gaunt and gray.

She stood motionless watching him with a look of sullen bitterness.

She was the last of "the Elkinses," a mountain family run to seed.

As he rode away he saw in the field a boy with a pitchfork in his hands, a meager ragged little chap.