While ploughing his fields one day, John Cameron, a farmer, notices that his horse, Jerry, is evidently sick, so stops work and takes the team up to the barn. He looses Jerry and lets him go into a loose box, while the other horse, Jim, is put, as usual, into his stall. Cameron finds that the horse is in bad shape, and at once sets off to see a veterinary surgeon, who gives him medicine for the animal, but does not come to see what is the matter. That same morning, Julia, his daughter, receives a reply from the principal of the School of Arts and Sciences to a letter she has written him asking the cost of a course she wishes to take. She has long hoped to get something better than a college education, and has been saving all the money she could make on her chickens in order to be able to afford it. Her elder sister, Bessie, who is rather of a frivolous disposition, already attends the school, but her parents, who have besides the two girls, several other younger children, cannot afford to send Julia as well. It is at the cost of much hard work and self denial that Julia has been able to save at all and she is now overjoyed to find that she has just enough to put her through. That night the horse dies, Cameron is in despair, for Jim, Jerry's team-mate, is an old horse and is not strong enough to plough alone. Unless Cameron is able to get his seed into the ground and reap the harvest, he will be unable to meet the payment on the mortgage, due in the fall. Both he and his wife are greatly distressed, for it looks as if their work of years in improving the farm will all be wasted. Knowing this, Julia decides to forego her college course and offer them the money so that a new horse may be bought. This course is indeed difficult for her for she has long dreamed of what her new life would be. The sight of her frivolous sister, who does not seem to realize what opportunities she has, only makes it harder for her to bear. At first her father will not accept the money, knowing of the dream of his daughter's heart, but at length she persuades him to do so, all the time wearing a smiling face as though it means nothing to her. Truly it is such commonplace sacrifices as these that demand the highest courage.