Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/50

 face portended. "Is it—is it broke?" he appealed.

The mother's answer was a sob, deep and farreaching as if her lungs would confess all her grief in a single expiration.

Something that felt like an icy dagger pierced the heart of George Judson. A broken back! A dog of his had once sustained a broken back. He knew the utter helplessness, the utter hopelessness, of a creature with a broken back. Yet of his father such a calamity seemed unbelievable. His father had been always to him the embodiment of towering strength. And now was he as helpless as the puppy? Would he never fight the battle of bread for them again? Never chastise his sons again? George felt that he could take a thrashing every day of his adolescent life if only his father could be strong enough to give it to him.

His mother rose heavily and went inside, tears conquered, tear-blotches unconquerable. She stooped and kissed her husband's pain-dewed brow.

"Courage, Mary, old girl!" he whispered. "We got to bear it."

"I know," she said, simply, mournfully, with eloquent resignation in every line of her face and pose.

The two boys were still crouching in separate loneliness upon the porch, with just the width