Page:Frank Owen - Rare Earth, 1931.djvu/86

 the War came. Enoch went. The colored mammy was lef' all alone. Night after night she waited for 'er boy. But 'e never cum back. Now the shack is a forlorn thing standin' in the center of a unplowed field. The mammy is like a black ghost. Even now she believes 'e's cornin' bacK. In the meantime there's the fields fergotten, neglected. Nobody to think about 'em."

As Samuel Gage finished speaking Jethro turned from him and walked off across the wheatland. He had forgotten his neighbor's very existence but he had not forgotten the story which he had heard. Samuel Gage gazed after him for a moment. He was not angry at the abrupt desertion. He was sorry, sorry for this rich master of the soil.

Slowly he shook his head. "Too bad," he muttered. "Too bad."

Meanwhile Jethro walked through the fields. The War had ruined the world. It had killed millions of men. Only that morning he had read the official list of the dead which a local paper had published.