Part 24

From this time he was an object of charity no more. Had Tom Jennings not been a man of tender heart, but only a hunter out after meat, he still would have taken Mac along. Just as in people when one sense is destroyed others grow more than normally keen, so with Mac. Never, declared Tom, could a dog smell birds so far; never did bird dog have a nose that told him so exactly where they were.

Fortunately, the route over which Tom hunted lay in extensive river bottoms, cultivated in corn. There were few fences and Mac soon learned where they were. There were no woods, and only an occasional thicket that Mac could circle with a fair degree of safety. The pointer did all the wide ranging.

Now and then Mac fell into a ditch or creek. It was always pitiful to Tom Jennings to see this. But each time the blind dog found his way out and went on undaunted, head high, tail wagging as if with a perpetual and inward joy.

"I've seen some blind folks," said Tom once to his wife, "that looked happier than folks with eyes. Mac looks happier to me than dogs that can see. It's funny."

So the years passed, and blind Mac came to be a familiar figure, and the children grew, and Tom Jennings worked hard on his farm to give them an education.

First Frank, the lad, outgrew the country schools, just as he outgrew his clothes. He was a hardworking, serious-minded, intelligent boy. Then the girls, both bright, reached the next to the last grade in the country school. And Tom Jennings and Martha Jennings his wife determined that each of them should have a college education. So Tom worked very hard and Martha saved very closely. And the fall day came when Frank left home to go to college in Greenville; then another day, the fall following, when the girls left, also. Thus Martha and Tom and Mac were left alone on the farm.

"You know," said Tom once (he was a simple, religious man), "I sometimes think it's a strange thing, Mother, that that poor dog should have been struck while he was takin' shelter under the Word of God. I know he ain't nothin' but a dog, but I reckon God made him. I don't see why God struck him."

"Maybe there was purpose in it, Tom," said his wife.

Then hard luck came to Tom Jennings just at the time when the bills for the children's second matriculation were due. First, the river rose and drowned some of his cattle and ruined a good deal of corn that had not been gathered. He worked hard, even desperately, to save what he could and not let the children know. Then Tom himself was taken with a queer feeling in the chest, a feeling of tightness and dull pain and shortness of breath. Martha pleaded with him a long time to consult a doctor in Greenville before he consented to do so.

The doctor listened with a stethoscope placed on the farmer's chest. "Sit down, Jennings," he said at last. "Jennings, your heart leaks. You've overstrained it. You must never do any more hard manual work."

"But, Doctor----" Tom began.

"No buts about it. You are too good a man to drop off. You must go slow. You mustn't even walk fast. You must never run, and you must not lift heavy weights. Why don't you sell your farm and move to town?"

"But the children, Doctor. I'm trying to give 'em a better chance than I had or their mother."

"That's all right, Jennings. But we have to trim our sails to meet life as it is. Your heart leaks, man! You've done what you could for your children. They'll just have to shift for themselves."

Tom Jennings drove slowly home. Martha, not knowing the purpose of his visit to town that day, had gone to see Mrs. Taylor, a neighbour. Even Mac was not in the yard to welcome him. He put up his horse, then sat down on the back steps to do the hardest thinking he had ever done.

At first it seemed to him like providence that just recently Tom Belcher had offered to buy the farm. In fact, he was calling him up every day about it. He could sell it to-morrow and then he could move to Greenville. The children were paying part of their expenses. But without his help, two of them at least would have to leave college. What was more, they would have to go to work to help him now. The interest from what he could get for the farm would not keep him going--and farming was the only thing he knew how to do.

But why shouldn't they help him? He had already done for them more than any neighbour had done for his children. True, his greatest ambition would be unrealized. But, as the doctor said, you had to trim your sails in this life. Why should he carry on a fight when he had been stricken? God did not expect a crippled man to run a race.

Also, he was frightened for his life. He carried within his body an enemy that might strike him down at any moment. Then, rather pleasantly, he forecast his life in town. He had fought hard, and now he could lay his armour down, and no one would think any the less of him.

And so he sat pondering, thinking first of his children, for whom he had had such high ambitions, then of himself, who would like to live his allotted span, when across the pasture he saw blind Mac coming. It was a hot September afternoon, and he had evidently been to the creek to cool off and to get away from flies. He came steadily along, and though nobody was near his tail was gently wagging.

The rear lot gate had been left open so the cattle could go to pasture, and the dog came through the gate and across the barn lot. This brought him to the fence that separated the lot from the yard, and before this fence he stopped and felt about with his foot, tail still wagging. Tom Jennings did not speak but watched him with queer emotions.

Having located the fence the blind dog backed off, looked up as if trying to see, started to spring, hesitated, started again, and finally leaped. His front paws hooked over the top plank, and he pulled himself up, remained balanced another moment, then jumped into the yard. It was as neatly done as if he were not blind. Tail still wagging, he came across the yard.

But Martha had forgotten at last: in the middle of the yard was a chicken coop she had recently moved there. Tom started to call out a warning, then for some queer reason did not. Over the unexpected obstacle the dog stumbled and came near falling. He let out no cry. He simply went to the coop, felt it, as if to locate it for the future, then came on toward the house. His head was bowed, though, as if with that shame he seemed always to feel when because of his affliction he happened to have an accident. But his tail was still wagging.

"Mac!" It broke from the man.

The blind dog raised his head and whiffed the air. Then he located his master and came toward him. He laid his head on Tom Jennings's knee, and Tom Jennings laid his big hard hand on the blind dog's head.

"God struck you!" he said hoarsely, "an' you never give up. God put out yo' eyes, and still you do your work. An' you're only a dumb brute, an' I was made in the image of God!"

The rural telephone in the hall suddenly gave his ring, and he rose and went into the house.

"Yes--I've decided, Tom," he said. "I ain't goin' to sell the farm."

After that there came, perforce, a change in Jennings's method of farming. Years ago Frank had besought him to diversify his crops, to study his soil, to take advantage of the information the agricultural college and the Government were so glad to send.