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 nice big strong plants is took. An' I'm purty nigh sure I know who took 'em, too; an' it's Luke Wolf. He was too damn lazy to water his bed there when it was so dry in April, an' his plants didn't do no good. He didn't have hardly nothing in his bed. So after I found the plants was stole, I clim up on the brow o' the ridge an' looked over; an' there sure enough was him an' Hat a-settin' fer dear life. They had that half witted brother o' Luke's a-droppin' fer 'em. I had a good mind to go daown an' tell 'em to gimme back my plants. But there 'tis. I can't prove he took 'em; but I know damn well he did."

"Ain't that a mean shame!" exclaimed Judith. "An' after all how hard you slaved to save them plants! An' we can't git plants nowhere else, cause nobody hain't got plants this year, count o' the dry spring. You had the finest bed anywheres araound."

"We'll have to put it in corn," said Jerry disgustedly. "An' the corn'll be so late the frost'll take it. If I'd a knowed, I might a saved myse'f the work o' plowin' an' harrowin' the ground. But that's haow it goes. A man works hard to do sumpin for hisself an' his fam'ly, an' then some lousy, thievin' neighbor slinks in an' gits away with it. It sholy is discouragin'."

Judith tried to console Jerry and tried for his sake to appear as indignant and disgusted as he over the loss. But it was not in her nature to take material loss so seriously; and she felt secretly relieved to think that she would not have to set any more tobacco that year. She was ashamed of this feeling, for it seemed like rank disloyalty to Jerry; but she could not help entertaining it.

Luke and Hat Wolf lived in a little ramshackle frame shanty in one of the neighboring hollows. They were a young couple not many years older than Jerry and Judith; but they had been married and had been raising tobacco on the shares for three or four years. They had a well sustained reputation for almost superhuman meanness and stinginess.

They were a pair of young giants. When they drove to-