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 and at last she was through, at least until the nursing baby waked and cried in the night.

The next morning at four o'clock the same thing began all over again.

As they neared the end of the long job, a febrile uneasiness stirred the dull atmosphere of the stripping room. It was the anxiety about the market, the eagerness to get done, and catch the opening price. It was whispered that on account of the war in Europe tobacco was going to bring the biggest price in years. Hat and Luke came early and stayed late. Their fingers flew. They were far ahead of Jerry and Judith, because Judith had to stay home at least one day a week to wash for the children. Jerry fretted at the slowness with which the work went on. Daily the tension of his anxiety grew more strained.

Not only in the stripping rooms, but all over the face of Scott County excitement grew and spread as the time of the opening of the market drew near. The price of tobacco was such an unstable thing that it was always a matter for conjecture. It was not a thing that varied within limits and according to known conditions, like the price of hogs and corn. In its variations the price of Kentucky Burley scorned limits; and the circumstances that controlled it were to the tobacco growers a shrouded mystery. Wherever men met together, there was only one thing talked about: the price that tobacco was going to bring. Each man shook his head sagely and hinted darkly that he had inside information on the subject. In reality they were as babes unborn. Speculators great and small hung about stripping rooms, appraising the tobacco. The growers themselves began to dicker about buying each other's crops. Every man who had a drop of sporting blood in his veins was itching to buy, sell, to take some sort of a chance. Their wives coldly counseled them to sit tight and tend to their own business, which advice made them surreptitiously determined to stake something on the turn of Fortune's wheel.

Before they had finished stripping, Jerry caught a cold which developed into a sort of influenza. He kept on working, miserable with a swollen throat and aching head. Then one