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 any good, they'll grow into good terbaccer yet. It don't take terbaccer long to make itsse'f."

It rained several times through June and the plants began to spread out green and lusty. Then with July the weather turned dry again and intensely hot. The clay hillsides baked harder than ever, so hard that the clods were more like stones than lumps of dried earth. Jerry, in an attempt to save his crop by making cultivation take the place of rain, went through his corn and tobacco again and again with the cultivator, then followed the rows of tobacco with his great sharp hoe, loosening up the ground around each plant. Judith tried to help him at this task but had to give it up. The ground was too flinty, the hoe too heavy; and the sickness of pregnancy which was coming upon her for the second time made her arms weak and nerveless.

No rain fell during July; and in blinding light and blazing heat August set in. It seemed to Jerry, who anxiously watched the sky, as though nature, not content with defrauding him out of the fruit of his labors, was amusing herself by making a fool of him and playing with him as a cat plays with a mouse. Sometimes the sky would grow overcast and all the signs of approaching rain appear, only to be swept away with the next wind. Occasionally even a light shower would fall, enough to partly lay the dust and irritate the anxious tobacco growers. Then the sky would clear again. Often they would see it raining on the horizon, over near Cynthiana or Georgetown or up toward Cincinnati. But no rain fell to refresh their own thirsty fields. Sometimes on hot afternoons great black storm clouds gathered in the west and rolled up into the sky, then passed away obliquely and disappeared toward the south. Through the heavy, sultry night, when it was hard to get to sleep, heat lightning played incessantly around the horizon. This long continued strain of watching for rain and seeing it approach only to go away again began to wear on the nerves of both Jerry and Judith. They became touchy and irritable and snapped at each other over trifling matters.

Judith tried to keep her garden alive by frequent hoeings.