EARLY in July when the drought had burned the crops to a crisp, and plant life was beyond redemption, the Banks, Trust and Insurance Companies holding notes secured by mortgages against the land and stock of Jean Baptiste began proceedings for a foreclosure. He read with the cold perspiration upon his forehead the notices that appeared in the papers. Attachments were filed against all he personally possessed in Gregory County, as well as in Tripp County. The fact that he had not had his sister's homestead transferred to him, and that she had just made proof that summer, was a relief to him now, and with a sigh he laid down the newspapers containing the notices.

It was no surprise since he had been threatened with such for many months, he regarded it therefore as unavoidable. But when the grim reality of the situation dawned upon him, it weakened him. Never had he dreamed that it would come to this. He took mental inventory of his possessions and what he could lay claim to, and he happened to think about his wife's homestead. On this he had made his home since her departure, and no trouble had been given him. While the local land office had rendered a decision in her favor; the contestee had taken an appeal to the general land office and the commissioner and upon being represented by an attorney, the local land office's decision had been reversed. It had been up to him then to go further, which he had done, by appealing the case to the highest office in the land department, the Secretary of the Interior, and here it rested. To do this, he had agreed to pay the attorney $300 to win, and one hundred dollars in the event he should not, the latter amount he had paid, and so the case stood. He had formulated no plans regarding it beyond this as to how he would continue to hold it, since now it was a settled fact in his mind that he and the woman he had married were parted forever.

But poverty accompanied by crop failures for three years was a general and accepted thing now. And the fact that he was being foreclosed, occasioned no comment, and at least he could continue on without intensely feeling the attendant disgrace.

It was at this juncture in life that a new thought came to Jean Baptiste. In all his life he had been a thinker, a practical thinker—a prolific thinker. Moreover, a great reader into the bargain. So the thought that struck him now, was writing. Perhaps he could write. If so then what would he write? So in the days that followed, gradually a plot formed in his mind, and when he had decided, he chose that he could write his own story—his life of hell, the work of an evil power!