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No matter how thrifty, strong and ambitions a man may be, his earning power down in the heart of the Tennessee Mountains amounts to next to nothing.
This discouraging fact might never have occurred to Jim Howard, had it not been for his cripple brother, little Ted. Little Ted had fallen from his rough cradle, when a baby. Whatever had happened then had not seriously developed until about a year ago. Then one of the delicate little legs began to wither and become gnarled. Even then, Jim might never have known the accompanying agony had not the brave little fellow begun to moan all night long in his sleep. But thruout the day, there was always a bright smile that belied the tears in his voice. "When he found that he really had to sob, and give way to terrible pain, he sought a secluded dell in the woods, where he buried his pinched face in the moss, and sobbed out all the agony in his pain-racked body.
Jim came upon him unawares one day, and that's how he came to realize his little brother's distressing condition.
That afternoon he carried the little fellow to Piketown, an uphill grind of five miles. The local doctor confessed the case was beyond his powers of treatment. He suggested a crutch. Furthermore, he acknowledged he knew what the trouble was, and promised to write to an eminent specialist in Memphis. It took Jim's earnings for two days to pay for this unsatisfactory advice.
Jim was a woodsman, 'and could
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make 'most anything out of wood. He made a crutch for little Ted that was the pride of his life. The crutch did not alleviate the pain, tho, so Jim waited impatiently for news from the specialist.
At last it came. The letter was most encouraging. It guaranteed to cure the little fellow, if treatment was not delayed too long. The eminent specialist, as a matter of fact, had never lost a case or failed to cure one. His fee was usually three hundred dollars. He would be glad, however, to make a special rate in this case — two hundred dollars.
Two hundred dollars!
This appalling figure made Jim cry out in the anguish of his despair. In two years Jim had saved eight dollars, which he had spent last Christmas for a suit of clothes for little Ted and a couple of new axes for his work.
Two hundred dollars !
Why, nobody in all Splitrail County could muster as much money as that!
He dejectedly abandoned the whole project. Every time he got a chance, however, he put away a quarter in the trunk of a rotten tree.
And little Ted kept getting worse and worse. Jim would have sacrificed his life just then to have made his little brother well. He had even wondered if it might be done.
But he had never yet considered sacrificing his honest principles. And when Jed French came one day and offered him a " third' ' share in his illicit still for making moonshine whisky, Jim was on the point of shooting the wily old moonshiner on