As Joe had said, he was not religious, according to catechisms and creeds. He could not have qualified in the least exacting of the many faiths. All the religion that he had was of his own making, for his mother's was altogether too ferocious in its punishments and too dun and foggy in its rewards for him.

He read the Bible, and he believed most of it. There was as much religion, said he, in the Commandments as a man needed; a man could get on with that much very well. Beyond that he did not trouble.

He read the adventures of David and the lamentations of Jeremiah, and the lofty exhortations of Isaiah for the sonority of the phrasing, the poetry and beauty. For he had not been sated by many tales nor blunted by many books. If he could manage to live according to the Commandments, he sometimes told his mother, he would not feel uneasy over a better way to die.

But he was not giving this matter much thought as he emptied the swill-pails to the chortling hogs. He was thinking about the red in Ollie's cheeks, like the breast of a bright bird seen through the leaves, and of her quick flight up the path. It was a new Ollie that he had discovered that morning, one unknown and unspoken to before that day. But why had her face grown red that way, he wondered? Why had she run away?

And Ollie, over her smoking pan on the kitchen stove, was thinking that something might be established in the way of comradeship between herself and the bound boy, after all. It took him a long time to get acquainted, she thought; but his friendship might be all the more stable for that. There was comfort in it; as she worked she smiled.

There was no question of the need in which Ollie stood of friendship, sympathy, and kind words. Joe had been in that house six months, and in that time he had witnessed more pain than he believed one small woman's heart could bear. While he was not sure that Isom ever struck his wife, he knew that he tortured her in endless combinations of cruelty, and pierced her heart with a thousand studied pangs. Often, when the house was still and Isom was asleep, he heard her moaning and sobbing, her head on the kitchen table.

These bursts of anguish were not the sudden gusts of a pettish woman's passion, but the settled sorrow of one who suffered without hope. Many a time Joe tiptoed to the bottom of the staircase in his bare feet and looked at her, the moonlight dim in the cheerless kitchen, her head a dark blotch upon the whiteness of her arms, bowed there in her grief. Often he longed to go to her with words of comfort and let her know that there was one at least who pitied her hard fate and sad disillusionment.

In those times of tribulation Joe felt that they could be of mutual help and comfort if they could bring themselves to speak, for he suffered also the pangs of imprisonment and the longings for liberty in that cruel house of bondage. Yet he always turned and went softly, almost breathlessly, back to his bed, leaving her to sob and cry alone in the struggle of her hopeless sorrow.

It was a harder matter to keep his hands from the gristly throat of grim old Isom Chase, slumbering unfeelingly in his bed while his young wife shredded her heart between the burr-stones of his cruel mill. Joe had many an hour of struggle with himself, lying awake, his hot temples streaming sweat, his eyes staring at the ribs of the roof.

During those months Joe had set and hardened. The muscles had thickened over his chest and arms; his neck was losing the long scragginess of youth; his fingers were firm-jointed in his broadening hands. He knew that Isom Chase was no match for him, man to man.

But, for all his big body and great strength, he was only a boy in his sense of justice, in his hot, primitive desire to lunge out quickly and set the maladjustments of that household straight. He did not know that there was a thing as old as the desires of men at the bottom of Ollie's sorrow, nor understand the futility of chastisement in the case of Isom Chase.

Isom was as far as ever from his hope of a son or heir of any description—although he could not conceive the possibility of fathering a female child—and his bitter reproaches fell on Ollie, as they had fallen upon and blasted the woman who had trudged that somber course before her into the grateful shelter of the grave. It was a thing which Ollie could not discuss with young Joe, a thing which only a sympathetic mother might have lightened the humiliation of or eased with tender counsel.

Isom, seeing that the book of his family must close with him, expelled the small grain of tenderness that his dry heart had held for his wife at the beginning, and counted her now nothing but another back to bear his burdens. He multiplied her tasks, and snarled and snapped, and more than once in those work-crowded autumn days, when she had lagged in her weariness, he had lifted his hand to strike. The day would come when that threatened blow would fall; of that Ollie had no consoling doubt. She did not feel that she would resent it, save in an addition to her accumulated hate, for hard labor by day and tears by night break the spirit until the flints of cruelty no longer wake its fire.

Day after day, as he worked by the side of Isom in the fields, Joe had it foremost in his mind to speak to him of his unjust treatment of his wife. Yet he hung back out of the Oriental conception which he held, due to his Scriptural reading, of that relationship between woman and man. A man's wife was his property in a certain, broad sense. It would seem unwarranted by any measure of excess short of murder for another to interfere between them. Joe held his peace, therefore, but with internal ferment and unrest.

It was in those days of Joe's disquietude that Ollie first spoke to him of Isom's oppressions. The opportunity fell a short time after their early morning meeting in the path. Isom had gone to town with a load of produce, and Joe and Ollie had the dinner alone for the first time since he had been under that roof.

Ollie's eyes were red and swollen from recent weeping, her face was mottled from her tears. Much trouble had made her careless of late of her prettiness, and now she was disheveled, her apron awry around her waist, her hair mussed, her whole aspect one of slovenly disregard. Her depression was so great that Joe was moved to comfort her.

"You've got a hard time of it," said he. "If there's anything I can do to help you I wish you'd let me know."

Ollie slung a dish carelessly upon the table, and followed it with Joe's coffee, which she slopped half out into the saucer.

"Oh, I feel just like I don't care any more!" said she, her lips trembling, tears starting again in her irritated eyes. "I get treatment here that no decent man would give a dog!"

Joe felt small and young in Ollie's presence, due to the fact that she was older by a year at least than himself.

That feeling of littleness had been one of his peculiarities as long as he could remember when there were others about older than himself, and supposed from that reason to be graver and wiser. It probably had its beginning in Joe's starting out rather spindling and undersized, and not growing much until he was ten or thereabout, when he took a sudden shoot ahead, like a water-sprout on an apple-tree.

And then he always had regarded matrimony as a state of gravity and maturity, into which the young and unsophisticated did not venture. This feeling seemed to place between them in Joe's mind a boundless gulf, across which he could offer her only the sympathy and assistance of a boy. There was nothing in his mind of sympathy from an equality of years and understanding, only the chivalric urging of succor to the oppressed.

"It's a low-down way for a man to treat a woman, especially his wife," said Joe, his indignation mounting at sight of her tears.

"Yes, and he'd whip you, too, if he dared to do it," said she, sitting in Isom's place at the end of the table, where she could look across into Joe's face. "I can see that in him when he watches you eat."

"I hope he'll never try it," said Joe.

"You're not afraid of him?"

"Maybe not," admitted Joe.

"Then why do you say you hope he'll never try it?" she pressed.

"Oh, because I do," said Joe, bending over his plate.

"I'd think you'd be glad if he did try it, so you could pay him off for his meanness," she said.

Joe looked across at her seriously.

"Did he slap you this morning?" he asked.

Ollie turned her head, making no reply.

"I thought I heard you two scuffling around in the kitchen as I came to the porch with the milk," said he.

"Don't tell it around!" she appealed, her eyes big and terrified at the recollection of what had passed. "No, he didn't hit me, Joe; but he choked me. He grabbed me by the throat and shook me—his old hand's as hard as iron!"

Joe had noticed that she wore a handkerchief pinned around her neck. As she spoke she put her hand to her throat, and her tears gushed again.

"That's no way for a man to treat his wife," said Joe indignantly.

"If you knew everything—if you knew everything!" said she.

Joe, being young, and feeling younger, could not see how she was straining to come to a common footing of understanding with him, to reach a plane where his sympathy would be a balm. He could not realize that her orbit of thought was similar to his own, that she was nearer a mate for him, indeed, than for hairy-limbed, big-jointed Isom Chase, with his grizzled hair and beard.

"It was all over a little piece of ribbon I bought yesterday when I took the eggs up to the store," she explained. "I got two cents a dozen more than I expected for them, and I put the extra money into a ribbon—only half a yard. Here it is," said she, taking it from the cupboard; "I wanted it to wear on my neck."

She held it against her swathed throat with a little unconscious play of coquetry, a sad smile on her lips.

"It's nice, and becoming to you, too," said Joe, speaking after the manner of the countryside etiquette on such things.

"Isom said I ought to have put the money into a package of soda, and when I wouldn't fuss with him about it, that made him madder and madder. And then he—he—did that!"

"You wouldn't think Isom would mind ten cents," said Joe.

"He'd mind one cent," said she in bitter disdain. "One cent—huh! he'd mind one egg! Some people might not believe it, but I tell you, Joe, that man counts the eggs every day, and he weighs every pound of butter I churn. If I wanted to, even, I couldn't hide away a pound of butter or a dozen of eggs any more than I could hide away that stove."

"But I don't suppose Isom means to be hard on you or anybody," said Joe. "It's his way to be close and stingy, and he may do better by you one of these days."

"No, he'll never do any better," she sighed. "If anything, he'll do worse—if he can do any worse. I look for him to strike me next!"

"He'd better not try that when I'm around!" said Joe hotly.

"What would you do to him, Joe?" she asked, her voice lowered almost to a whisper. She leaned eagerly toward him as she spoke, a flush on her face.

"Well, I'd stop him, I guess," said Joe deliberately, as if he had considered his words. As he spoke he reached down for his hat, which he always placed on the floor beside his chair when he took his meals.

"If there was a soul in this world that cared for me—if I had anywhere to go, I'd leave him this hour!" declared Ollie, her face burning with the hate of her oppressor.

Joe got up from his chair and left the table; she rose with him and came around the side. He stopped on his way to the door, looking at her with awkward bashfulness as she stood there flushed and brilliant in her tossed state, scarcely a yard between them.

"But there's nobody in the world that cares for me," she complained sorrowfully.

Joe was lifting his hat to his head. Midway he stayed his hand, his face blank with surprise.

"Why, you've got your mother, haven't you?" he asked.

"Mother!" she repeated scornfully. "She'd drive me back to him; she was crazy for me to marry him, for she thinks I'll get all his property and money when he dies."

"Well, he may die before long," consoled Joe.

"Die!" said she; and again, "Die! He'll never die!"

She leaned toward him suddenly, bringing her face within a few inches of his. Her hot breath struck him on the cheek; it moved the clustered hair at his temple and played warm in the doorway of his ear.

"He'll never die," she repeated in low, quick voice, which fell to a whisper in the end, "unless somebody he's tramped on and ground down and cursed and driven puts him out of the way!"

Joe stood looking at her with big eyes, dead to that feminine shock which would have tingled a mature man to the marrow, insensible to the strong effort she was making to wake him and draw him to her. He drew back from her, a little frightened, a good deal ashamed, troubled, and mystified.

"Why, you don't suppose anybody would do that?" said he.

Ollie turned from him, the fire sinking down in her face.

"Oh, no; I don't suppose so," she said, a little distant and cold in her manner.

She began gathering up the dishes.

Joe stood there for a little while, looking at her hands as they flew from plate to plate like white butterflies, as if something had stirred in him that he did not understand. Presently he went his way to take up his work, no more words passing between them.

Ollie, from under her half raised lids, watched him go, tiptoeing swiftly after him to the door as he went down the path toward the well. Her breath was quick upon her lips; her breast was agitated. If that slow hunk could be warmed with a man's passions and desires; if she could wake him; if she could fling fire into his heart! He was only a boy, the man in him just showing its strong face behind that mask of wild, long hair. It lay there waiting to move him in ways yet strange to his experience. If she might send her whisper to that still slumbering force and charge it into life a day before its time!

She stood with hand upon the door, trailing him with her eyes as he passed on to the barn. She felt that she had all but reached beyond the insulation of his adolescence in that burning moment when her breath was on his cheek; she knew that the wood, even that hour, was warm under the fire. What might a whisper now, a smile then, a kindness, a word, a hand laid softly upon his hair, work in the days to come?

She turned back to her work, her mind stirred out of its sluggish rut, the swirl of her new thoughts quickening in her blood. Isom Chase would not die; he would live on and on, harder, drier, stingier year by year, unless a bolt from heaven withered him or the hand of man laid him low. What might come to him, he deserved, even the anguish of death with a strangling cord about his neck; even the strong blow of an ax as he slept on his bed, snatching from him the life that he had debased of all its beauty, without the saving chance of repentance in the end.

She had thought of doing it with her own hand; a hundred ways she had planned and contrived it in her mind, goaded on nearer and nearer to it by his inhuman oppressions day by day. But her heart had recoiled from it as a task for the hand of a man. If a man could be raised up to it, a man who had suffered servitude with her, a man who would strike for the double vengeance, and the love of her in his heart!

She went to the door again, gripping the stove-lid lifter in her little hand, as the jangle of harness came to her when Joe passed with the team. He rode by toward the field, the sun on his broad back, slouching forward as his heavy horses plodded onward. The man in him was asleep yet, yes; but there was a pit of fire as deep as a volcano's throat in his slumbering soul.

If she could lift him up to it, if she could pluck the heart out of him and warm it in her own hot breast, then there would stand the man for her need. For Isom Chase would not die. He would live on and on, like a worm in wood, until some strong hand fed him to the flames.



CHAPTER IV

A STRANGER AT THE GATE

Rain overtook Isom as he was driving home from town that evening, and rain was becoming one of the few things in this world from which he would flee. It aggravated the rheumatism in his knotted toes and stabbed his knee-joints with awl-piercing pains.

For upward of forty-five years Isom had been taking the rains as they came wherever they might find him. It made him growl to turn tail to them now, and trot to shelter from every shower like a hen.

So he was in no sweet humor as he drew near his own barn-yard gate with the early autumn downpour already finding its way through his coat. It came to him as he approached that portal of his domain that if he had a son the boy would be there, with the gate flung wide, to help him. It was only one of the thousand useful offices which a proper boy could fill around that place, thought he; but his wives had conspired in barrenness against him; no son ever would come to cheer his declining days.

Even if he had the kind of a wife that a man should have, reflected he, she would be watching; she would come through rain and hail, thunder and wild blast, to open the gate and ease him through without that troublesome stop.

Matrimony had been a profitless investment for him, said he in bitterness. His first wife had lived long and eaten ravenously, and had worn out shoes and calico slips, and his second, a poor unwilling hand, was not worth her keep.

So, with all this sour summing up of his wasted ventures in his mind, and the cold rain spitting through his years-worn coat, Isom was in no humor to debate the way with another man when it came to entering into his own property through his own wide gate.

But there was another man in the road, blocking it with his top-buggy, one foot out on the step, his head thrust around the side of the hood with inquiring look, as if he also felt that there should be somebody at hand to open the gate and let him pass without muddying his feet.

"Ho!" called Isom uncivilly, hailing the stranger as he pulled up his team, the end of his wagon-tongue threatening the hood of the buggy; "what do you want here?"

The stranger put his head out a bit farther and twisted his neck to look behind. He did not appear to know Isom, any more than Isom knew him, but there was the surliness of authority, the inhospitality of ownership, in Isom's mien, and it was the business of the man in the buggy to know men at a glance. He saw that Isom was the landlord, and he gave him a nod and smile.

"I'd like to get shelter for my horse and buggy for the night, and lodging for myself," said he.

"Well, if you pay for it I reckon you can git it," returned Isom. "Pile out there and open that gate."

That was the way that Curtis Morgan, advance agent of the divine light of literature, scout of knowledge, torch-bearer of enlightenment into the dark places of ignorance, made his way into the house of Isom Chase, and found himself in due time at supper in the low-ceiled kitchen, with pretty Ollie, like a bright bead in a rusty purse, bringing hot biscuits from the oven and looking him over with a smile.

Curtis Morgan was a slim and limber man, with a small head and a big mouth, a most flexible and plastic organ. Morgan wore a mustache which was cut back to stubs, giving his face a grubby look about the nose. His light hair was short and thick, curling in little love-locks about his ears.

Morgan sold books. He would put you in a set of twenty-seven volumes of the History of the World for fifty-three dollars, or he would open his valise and sell you a ready-reckoner for six bits. He carried Household Compendiums of Useful Knowledge and Medical Advisers; he had poultry guides and horse books, and books on bees, and if he couldn't sell you one thing he would sell you another, unless you were a worm, or a greased pig, and able, by some extraordinary natural or artificial attribute, to slip out of his hands.

As has been the case with many a greater man before him, Morgan's most profitable business was done in his smallest article of trade. In the country where men's lives were counted too short for all the work they had to do, they didn't have any time for histories of the world and no interest in them, anyhow. The world was to them no more than they could see of it, and the needs of their lives and their longings—save in some adventurer who developed among them now and then—went no farther than the limit of their vision.

The ready-reckoner was, therefore, the money-maker for Morgan, who seemed to carry an inexhaustible supply. It told a farm-hand what his pay amounted to by days and hours down to the fraction of a cent; it told the farmer what the interest on his note would be; it showed how to find out how many bushels of corn there were in a crib without measuring the contents, and how many tons of hay a stack contained; it told how to draw up a will and write a deed, and make liniment for the mumps.

Isom drew all this information out of his guest at supper, and it did not require much effort to set the sap flowing.

Morgan talked to Isom and looked at Ollie; he asked Joe a question, and cocked his eye on Ollie's face as if he expected to find the answer there; he pronounced shallow platitudes of philosophy aiming them at Isom, but looking at Ollie for approval or dissent.

Isom appeared to take rather kindly to him, if his unusual volubility indicated the state of his feelings. He asked Morgan a great deal about his business, and how he liked it, and whether he made any money at it. Morgan leaned back on the hinder legs of his chair, having finished his supper, and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for his goose-quill pick. He winked at Isom on the footing of one shrewd man to another as he applied the quill to his big white teeth.

"Well, I pay my way," said he.

There was a great deal back of the simple words; there was an oily self-satisfaction, and there was a vast amount of portentous reserve. Isom liked it; he nodded, a smile moving his beard. It did him good to meet a man who could get behind the sham skin of the world, and take it by the heels, and turn it a stunning fall.

Next morning, the sun being out again and the roads promising to dry speedily, Morgan hitched up and prepared to set out on his flaming path of enlightenment. Before going he made a proposal to Isom to use that place as headquarters for a week or two, while he covered the country lying about.

Anything that meant profit to Isom looked good and fitting in his eyes. The feeding of another mouth would entail little expense, and so the bargain was struck. Morgan was to have his breakfast and supper each day, and provender for his horse, at the rate of four dollars a week, payable in advance.

Morgan ran over his compendiums and horse books, but Isom was firm for cash; he suggested at least one ready-reckoner on account, but Isom had no need of that. Isom could guess to a hundredweight the contents of a stack of hay, and there never was a banker in this world that could outfigure him on interest. He had no more need for a ready-reckoner than a centipede has of legs. Morgan, seeing that nothing but money would talk there, produced the week's charge on the spot, and drove off to his day's canvassing well satisfied.

Morgan had not been a paying guest in that house two days before the somber domestic tragedy that it roofed was as plain to him as if he had it printed and bound, and in his valise along with the compendiums of his valuable assortment.

He found it pleasant to return to the farm early of an afternoon and sit in the kitchen door with his pipe, and watch Ollie's face clear of clouds as he talked. Consolation and cheer were strangers to her heart; it required no words from her to tell Morgan that.

Her blushing gratitude for small offices of assistance, such as fetching a pail of water or a basket of garden greens, repaid Morgan all that he missed in sales by cutting short his business day just for the pleasure of returning and talking with her.

Isom was too self-centered, and unconscious of his wife's uncommon prettiness, to be jealous or suspicious of Morgan's late goings or early returns. If a man wanted to pay him four dollars a week for the pleasure of carrying up water, cutting stove-wood or feeding the calves, the fool was welcome to do it as long as his money held.

So it was that old Isom, blind and deaf and money-mad, set with his own hand and kindled with his own breath, the insidious spark which trustful fools before his day have seen leap into flame and strip them of honor before the eyes of men.

Morgan made a long stay of it in that section, owing to the density of the population, he claimed, and the proximity of several villages which he could reach in a few miles' drive. He was in his third week when Isom was summoned on jury service to the county seat.

Twelve dollars had passed from the book agent's hands into Isom's, and Isom grinned over it as the easiest money that it ever had been his pleasure to collect. He put it away with his savings, which never had earned interest for a banker, and turned the care of the farm over to Joe.

Jury service at the county seat was an uncertain thing. It might last a day, and then it might tie a man up for two or three weeks, but Isom was able to leave home with a more comfortable feeling than ever before. He had a trustworthy servant to leave behind him, one in whose hands everything would be safe, under whose energy and conscientious effort nothing would drag or fall behind.

Isom felt that he could very well afford to spread on a little soft-soap, as flattery was provincially called, and invest Joe with a greater sense of his responsibility, if possible. When occasion required, Isom could rise to flattery as deftly as the best of them. It was an art at which his tongue was wonderfully facile, considering the fact that he mingled so seldom with men in the outside doings of life. His wits had no foil to whet against and grow sharp, save the hard substance of his own inflexible nature, for he was born with that shrewd faculty for taking men "on the blind side," as they used to call that trick in Missouri.

"I'm turnin' the whole farm over to you to look after like it was your own while I'm away," said he, "and I'm doing it with the feeling that it's in worthy hands. I know you're not the boy to shirk on me when my back's turned, for you never tried to do it to my face. You stand by me, Joe, and I'll stand by you; you'll never lose anything by it in the end.

"I may be a crabbed old feller once in a while, and snarl around some, but my bark's worse than my bite, you know that by this time. So I'll put everything in your hands, with a feeling that it'll be looked after just the same as if I was here."

"I'll do the best I can by you," promised Joe, his generous heart warming to Isom a little in spite of past indignities, and the fact that Joe knew very well the old man's talk was artful pretense.

"I know you will," said Isom, patting his shoulder in fatherly approbation. "In case I'm held over there a week, you keep your eye on that agent, and don't let him stay here a day overtime without another week's board in advance."

"I'll attend to him," promised Joe.

Isom's hand had lingered a minute on Joe's shoulder while he talked, and the old man's satisfaction over the depth of muscle that he felt beneath it was great. He stood looking Joe over with quick-shifting, calculating eyes, measuring him in every part, from flank to hock, like a farrier. He was gratified to see how Joe had filled out in the past six months. If he had paid for a colt and been delivered a draft-horse, his surprise would not have been more pleasant.

As it was, he had bargained for the services of a big-jointed, long-boned lad, and found himself possessed of a man. The fine part of it was that he had nearly two years more of service at ten dollars a month coming from Joe, who was worth twenty of any man's money, and could command it, just as he stood. That was business, that was bargaining.

Isom's starved soul distended over it; the feeling was warm in his veins, like a gill of home-made brandy. He had him, bound body and limb, tied in a corner from which he could not escape, to send and call, to fetch and carry, for the better part of two good, profitable years.

As Isom rode away he rubbed his dry, hard hands above his saddle-horn, feeling more comfortable than he had felt for many a day. He gloated over the excellent bargain that he had made with the Widow Newbolt; he grinned at the roots of his old rusty beard. If ever a man poked himself in the ribs in the excess of self-felicitation, Isom Chase did it as he rode along on his old buckskin horse that autumn morning, with the sun just lifting over the hill.

It was an excellent thing, indeed, for a patriot to serve his country once in a while on a jury, thought Isom, especially when that patriot had been shrewd in his dealings with the widow and orphan, and had thus secured himself against loss at home while his country called him abroad. Jury duty was nothing but a pleasant season of relaxation in such case.

There would be mileage and per diem, and the state would bear the expense of lodging and meals in the event of his being drawn out of the panel to serve in some long criminal case. Mileage and per diem would come in very nicely, in addition to the four dollars a week that loose-handed book agent was paying. For the first time in his life when called upon for jury service, Isom went to meet it with no sourness in his face. Mileage and per diem, but best of all, a great strong man left at home in his place; one to be trusted in and depended upon; one who would do both his master's work and his own.

Joe had no such pleasant cogitations to occupy his mind as he bent his long back to assume the double burden when Isom went away. For many days he had been unquiet with a strange, indefinable unrest, like the yearn of a wild-fowl when the season comes for it to wing away to southern seas. Curtis Morgan was behind that strong, wild feeling; he was the urge of it, and the fuel of its fire.

Why it was so, Joe did not know, although he struggled in his reason to make it clear. For many days, almost from the first, Joe had felt that Morgan should not be in that house; that his pretext of lingering there on business was a blind too thin to deceive anybody but Isom. Anybody could deceive Isom if he would work his scheme behind a dollar. It was a shield beyond which Isom could not see, and had no wish to inquire.

Joe did not like those late starts which Morgan made of a morning, long after he and Isom were in the field, nor the early homings, long before they came in to do the chores. Joe left the house each morning with reluctance, after Isom's departure, lingering over little things, finding hitherto undiscovered tasks to keep him about in the presence of Ollie, and to throw him between her and the talkative boarder, who seemed always hanging at her heels. Since their talk at dinner on the day that Morgan came, Joe had felt a new and deep interest in Ollie, and held for her an unaccountable feeling of friendliness.

This feeling had been fed, for a few days, by Ollie, who found odd minutes to talk with him as she had not talked before, and by small attentions and kindnesses. She had greeted him in the morning with smiles, where her face once wore the sad mask of misery; and she had touched his hand sometimes, with encouraging or commending caress.

Joe had yielded to her immediately the unreserved loyalty of his unsophisticated soul. The lot of his bondage was lightened by this new tie, the prospect of the unserved term under Isom was not so forbidding now. And now this fellow Morgan had stepped between them, in some manner beyond his power to define. It was as one who beholds a shadow fall across his threshold, which he can neither pick up nor cast away.

Ollie had no more little attentions for Joe, but endless solicitude for Morgan's comfort; no more full smiles for him, but only the reflections of those which beamed for the chattering lounger who made a pretense of selling books while he made love to another man's wife.

It was this dim groping after the truth, and his half-conception of it, that rendered Joe miserable. He did not fully understand what Morgan was about, but it was plain to him that the man had no honest purpose there. He could not repeat his fears to Isom, for Isom's wrath and correction would fall on Ollie. Now he was left in charge of his master's house, his lands, his livestock, and his honor.

The vicarious responsibility rested on him with serious weight. Knowing what he knew, and seeing what he saw, should he allow things to proceed as they had been going? Would he be true to the trust that Isom had placed in him with his parting word in standing aside and knowingly permitting this man to slip in and poison the heart of Isom's wife?

She was lonely and oppressed, and hungry for kind words, but it was not this stranger's office to make green the barrenness of her life. He was there, the bondboy, responsible to his master for his acts. She might come to him for sympathy, and go away with honor. But with this other, this man whose pale eyes shifted and darted like a botfly around a horse's ear, could she drink his counsel and remain undefiled?

Joe thought it up and down as he worked in the field near the house that morning, and his face grew hot and his eyes grew fevered, and his resentment against Morgan rose in his throat.

He watched to see the man drive away on his canvassing round, but the sun passed nine o'clock and he did not go. He had no right there, alone in the house with that woman, putting, who could say, what evil into her heart.

Ten o'clock and the agent's buggy had not left the barn. Joe could contain himself no longer. He was at work in a little stony piece of late clover, so rough he did not like to risk the mower in it. For three hours he had been laying the tumbled swaths in winding tracks across the field, and he had a very good excuse for going to the well, indeed. Coupled with that was the need of a whet-rock, and behind it all the justification of his position. He was there in his master's place; he must watch and guard the honor of his house.

Joe could not set out on that little trip without a good deal of moral cudgeling when it came to the point, although he threw down his scythe with a muttered curse on his lips for the man who was playing such an underhanded game.

It was on Ollie's account he hesitated. Ollie would think that he suspected her, when there was nothing farther from his mind. It was Morgan who would set the snare for her to trip into, and it was Morgan that he was going to send about his business. But Ollie might take offense and turn against him, and make it as unpleasant as she had shown that she could make it agreeable.

But duty was stronger than friendship. It was stern and implacable, and there was no pleasant road to take around it and come out with honor at the other end.

Joe made as much noise as he could with his big feet—and that was no inconsiderable amount—as he approached the house. But near the building the grass was long, and soft underfoot, and it bore Joe around to the kitchen window silently. His lips were too dry to whistle; his heart was going too fast to carry a tune.

He paused a little way beyond the window, which stood open with the sun falling through it, listening for the sound of their voices. It was strangely silent for a time when the book-agent was around.

Joe went on, his shadow breaking the sunbeam which whitened the kitchen floor. There was a little quick start as he came suddenly to the kitchen door; a hurried stir of feet. As he stepped upon the porch he saw Morgan in the door, Ollie not a yard behind him, their hands just breaking their clasp. Joe knew in his heart that Morgan had been holding her in his arms.

Ollie's face was flushed, her hair was disturbed. Her bosom rose and fell like troubled water, her eyes were brighter than Joe ever had seen them. Even Morgan was different, sophisticated and brazen that he was. A flash of red showed on his cheekbones and under his eyes; his thin nostrils were panting like gills.

Joe stood there, one foot on the porch, the other on the ground, as blunt as honesty, as severe as honor. There was nothing in his face that either of them could read to indicate what was surging in his breast. He had caught them, and they wondered if he had sense enough to know.

Joe pushed his hat back from his sweating forehead and looked inquiringly at Morgan.

"Your horse sick, or something?" he asked.

"No," said Morgan, turning his back on Joe with a little jerk of contempt in his shoulders.

"Well, I think he must be down, or something," said Joe, "for I heard a racket in the barn."

"Why didn't you go and see what was the matter?" demanded Morgan crossly, snatching his hat from the table.

Ollie was drowned in a confusion of blushes. She stood hanging her head, but Joe saw the quick turn of her eyes to follow Morgan as he went away in long strides toward the barn.

Joe went to the tool-chest which stood in a corner of the kitchen and busied himself clattering over its contents. Presently he looked at Ollie, his hand on the open lid of the box.

"Did you see that long whetstone lying around anywhere, Ollie?" he asked.

She lifted her head with a little start. Joe never had called her familiarly by her name before. It always had been "Missis Chase," distant and respectful.

"No, I haven't seen it, Joe," she answered, the color leaving her cheeks.

"All right, Ollie," said he, holding her eyes with steady gaze, until she shifted hers under the pain of it, and the questioning reproach.

Joe slammed down the lid of the tool-chest, as if with the intention of making as much noise as possible.

There was something in the way he had spoken her name that was stranger than the circumstance itself. Perhaps she felt the authority and the protection which Joe meant that his voice should assume; perhaps she understood that it was the word of a man. She was afraid of him at that moment, as she never had been afraid of Isom in all their married life.

"I suppose Isom put it away somewhere around the barn," said Joe.

"Maybe he did, Joe."

"I'll go down there and see if I can find it," he said.

Ollie knew, as well as Joe himself, that he was making the whetstone the vehicle to carry his excuse for watching Morgan away from the farm, but she was not certain whether this sudden shrewdness was the deep understanding of a man, or the domineering spirit of a crude lad, jealous of his passing authority.

The uncertainty troubled her. She watched him from the door and saw him approach Morgan, where he was backing his horse into the shafts.

"All right, is he?" asked Joe, stopping a moment.

Morgan was distant.

"I guess he'll live another day, don't worry about him," said he, in surly voice.

"What time do you aim to be back today?" pursued Joe, entirely unmoved by Morgan's show of temper.

"Say, I'll set up a bulletin board with my time-table on it if you've got to have it, Mr. Overseer!" said Morgan, looking up from the buckling of a shaft-strap, his face coloring in anger.

"Well, you don't need to get huffy over it."

"Mind your business then," Morgan growled.

He didn't wait to discuss the matter farther, but got into the buggy without favoring Joe with as much as another glance, gave his horse a vindictive lash with the whip and drove off, leaving the gate open behind him.

Joe shut it, and turned back to his mowing.

Many a time he paused that morning in his labor, leaning on the snath of his scythe, in a manner of abstraction and seeming indolence altogether strange to him. There was a scene, framed by the brown casing of the kitchen door, with two figures in it, two clinging hands, which persisted in its disturbing recurrence in his troubled mind.

Ollie was on dangerous ground. How far she had advanced, he did not know, but not yet, he believed, to the place where the foulness of Morgan had defiled her beyond cleansing. It was his duty as the guardian of his master's house to watch her, even to warn her, and to stop her before she went too far.

Once he put down his scythe and started to go to the house, his mind full of what he felt it his duty to say.

Then there rose up that feeling of disparity between matron and youth which had held him at a distance from Ollie before. He turned back to his work with a blush upon his sun-scorched face, and felt ashamed. But it was not a thing to be deferred until after the damage had been done. He must speak to her that day, perhaps when he should go in for dinner. So he said.

Ollie seemed self-contained and uncommunicative at dinner. Joe thought she was a little out of humor, or that she was falling back into her old gloomy way, from which she had emerged, all smiles and dimples, like a new and youthful creature, on the coming of Morgan. He thought, too, that this might be her way of showing her resentment of the familiarity that he had taken in calling her by her name.

The feeling of deputy-mastership was no longer important upon his shoulders. He shrank down in his chair with a sense of drawing in, like a snail, while he burned with humiliation and shame. The pinnacle of manhood was too slippery for his clumsy feet; he had plumped down from its altitudes as swiftly as he had mounted that morning under the spur of duty. He was a boy, and felt that he was a boy, and far, far from being anything nobler, or stronger, or better qualified to give saving counsel to a woman older, if not wiser, than himself.

Perhaps it was Ollie's purpose to inspire such feeling, and to hold Joe in his place. She was neither so dull, nor so unpractised in the arts of coquetry, to make such a supposition improbable.

It was only when Joe sighted Morgan driving back to the farm late in the afternoon that his feeling of authority asserted itself again, and lifted him up to the task before him. He must let her understand that he knew of what was going on between them. A few words would suffice, and they must be spoken before Morgan entered the house again to pour his poison into her ears.

Ollie was churning that afternoon, standing at her task close by the open door. Joe came past the window, as he had crossed it that morning, his purpose hot upon him, his long legs measuring the ground in immense, swift steps. He carried his hat in his hand, for the day was one of those with the pepper of autumn in it which puts the red in the apple's cheeks.

Ollie heard him approaching; her bare arm stayed the stroke of the churn-dasher as she looked up. Her face was bright, a smile was in her eyes, revealing the clear depths of them, and the life and the desires that issued out of them, like the waters of a spring in the sun. She was moist and radiant in the sweat of her labor, and clean and fresh and sweet to see.

Her dress was parted back from her bosom to bare it to the refreshment of the breeze, and her skin was as white as the cream on the dasher, and the crimson of her cheeks blended down upon her neck, as if the moisture of her brow had diffused its richness, and spread its beauty there.

She looked at Joe, halted suddenly like a post set upright in the ground, stunned by the revelation of the plastic beauty of neck and bare bosom, and, as their eyes met, she smiled, lifted one white arm and pushed back a straying lock of hair.

Joe's tongue lay cold, and numb as wood against his palate; no word would come to it; it would not move. The wonder of a new beauty in God's created things was deep upon him; a warm fountain rose in him and played and tossed, with a new and pleasurable thrill. He saw and admired, but he was not ashamed.

All that he had come to say to her was forgotten, all that he had framed to speak as he bore hastily on toward the house had evaporated from his heated brain. A new world turned its bright colors before his eyes, a new breadth of life had been revealed, it seemed to him. In the pleasure of his discovery he stood with no power in him but to tremble and stare.

The flush deepened in Ollie's cheeks. She understood what was moving in his breast, for it is given to her kind to know man before he knows himself. She feigned surprise to behold him thus stricken, staring and silent, his face scarlet with the surge of his hot blood.

With one slow-lifted hand she gathered the edges of her dress together, withdrawing the revealed secret of her breast.

"Why, Joe! What are you looking at?" she asked.

"You," he answered, his voice dry and hoarse, like that of one who asks for water at the end of a race. He turned away from her then, saying no more, and passed quickly out of her sight beyond the shrubbery which shouldered the kitchen wall.

Slowly Ollie lifted the dasher which had settled to the bottom of the churn, and a smile broke upon her lips. As she went on with the completion of her task, she smiled still, with lips, with eyes, with warm exultation of her strong young body, as over a triumphant ending of some issue long at balance and undefined.

Joe went away from the kitchen door in a strange daze of faculties. For that new feeling which leaped in him and warmed him to the core, and gave him confidence in his strength never before enjoyed, and an understanding of things hitherto unrevealed, he was glad. But at heart he felt that he was a traitor to the trust imposed in him, and that he had violated the sanctity of his master's home.

Now he knew what it was that had made his cheeks flame in anger and his blood leap in resentment when he saw Ollie in the door that morning, all flushed and trembling from Morgan's arms; now he understood why he had lingered to interpose between them in past days. It was the wild, deep fear of jealousy. He was in love with his master's wife! What had been given him to guard, he had looked upon with unholy hunger; that which had been left with him to treasure, he had defiled with lustful eyes.

Joe struck across the fields, his work forgotten, now hot with the mounting fires of his newly discovered passion, now cold with the swelling accusation of a trust betrayed. Jealousy, and not a regard for his master's honor, had prompted him to put her on her guard against Morgan. He had himself coveted his neighbor's wife. He had looked upon a woman to lust after her, he had committed adultery in his heart. Between him and Morgan there was no redeeming difference. One was as bad as the other, said Joe. Only this difference; he would stop there, in time, ashamed now of the offending of his eyes and the trespass of his heart. Ollie did not know. He had not wormed his way into her heart by pitying her unhappiness, like the false guest who had emptied his lies into her ears.

Joe was able to see now how little deserving Isom was of any such blessing as Ollie, how ill-assorted they were by nature, inclination and age. But God had joined them, for what pains and penances He alone knew, and it was not the work of any man to put them apart.

At the edge of a hazel coppice, far away from the farmhouse that sheltered the object of his tender thoughts and furtive desires, Joe sat among the first fallen leaves of autumn, fighting to clear himself from the perplexities of that disquieting situation. In the agony of his aching conscience, he bowed his head and groaned.

A man's burden of honor had fallen upon him with the disclosure of a man's desires. His boyhood seemed suddenly to have gone from him like the light of a lamp blown out by a puff of wind. He felt old, and responsible to answer now for himself, since the enormity of his offense was plain to his smarting conscience.

And he was man enough to look after Morgan, too. He would proceed to deal with Morgan on a new basis, himself out of the calculation entirely. Ollie must be protected against his deceitful wiles, and against herself as well.

Joe trembled in his newer and clearer understanding of the danger that threatened her as he hastened back to the barn-yard to take up his neglected chores. The thought that Morgan and Ollie were alone in the house almost threw him into a fever of panic and haste.

He must not be guilty of such an oversight again; he must stand like a stern wall between them, and be able to account for his trust to Isom with unclouded heart.



CHAPTER V

THE SECRET OF THE CLOVER

Until the time he had entered Isom Chase's house, temptation never had come near Joe Newbolt. He never had kissed a maiden; he never had felt the quickening elixir of a soft breast pressed against his own. And so it fell that the sudden conception of what he had unwittingly come to, bore on him with a weight which his sensitive and upright mind magnified into an enormous and crushing shame. While his intention could bear arraignment and come away with acquittal, the fact that he had been perverted enough in the grain, as he looked at it, to drift unknowingly into love with another man's wife, galled him until his spirit groaned.

Isom did not return that evening; the conclusion of his household was that he had been chosen on a jury. They discussed it at supper, Ollie nervously gay, Morgan full of raucous laughter, Joe sober and grudging of his words.

Joe never had borne much of a hand at the table-talk since Morgan came, and before his advent there was none to speak of, so his taciturnity that evening passed without a second thought in the minds of Ollie and her guest. They had words enough for a house full of people, thought Joe, as he saw that for every word from the lips they sent two speeding from their eyes. That had become a language to which he had found the Rosetta Stone; it was as plain to him now as Roman text.

Perhaps Morgan regarded her with an affection as sincere as his own. He did not know; but he felt that it could not be as blameless, for if Joe had desired her in the uninterpreted passion of his full young heart, he had brought himself up to sudden judgment before the tribunal of his conscience. It would go no farther. He had put his moral foot down and smothered his unholy desire, as he would have stamped out a flame.

It seemed to Joe that there was something in Morgan's eyes which betrayed his heart. Little gleams of his underlying purpose which his levity masked, struck Joe from time to time, setting his wits on guard. Morgan must be watched, like a cat within leaping distance of an unfledged bird. Joe set himself the task of watching, determined then and there that Morgan should not have one dangerous hour alone with Ollie again until Isom came back and lifted the responsibility of his wife's safety from his shoulders.

For a while after supper that night Joe sat on the bench beside the kitchen door, the grape-vine rustling over his head, watching Ollie as she went to and fro about her work of clearing away. Morgan was in the door, his back against the jamb, leisurely smoking his pipe. Once in a while a snoring beetle passed in above his head to join his fellows around the lamp. As each recruit to the blundering company arrived, Morgan slapped at him as he passed, making Ollie laugh. On the low, splotched ceiling of the kitchen the flies shifted and buzzed, changing drowsily from place to place.

"Isom ought to put screens on the windows and doors," said Morgan, looking up at the flies.

"Mosquito bar, you mean?" asked Ollie, throwing him a smile over her shoulder as she passed.

"No, I mean wire-screens, everybody's gettin' 'em in now; I've been thinkin' of takin' 'em on as a side-line."

"It'll be a cold day in July when Isom spends any money just to keep flies out of his house!" said she.

Morgan laughed.

"Maybe if a person could show him that they eat up a lot of stuff he'd come around to it," Morgan said.

"Maybe," said Ollie, and both of them had their laugh again.

Joe moved on the bench, making it creak, an uneasy feeling coming over him. Close as Isom was, and hard-handed and mean, Joe felt that there was a certain indelicacy in his wife's discussion of his traits with a stranger.

Ollie had cleared away the dishes, washed them and placed them in the cupboard, on top of which the one clock of that household stood, scar-faced, but hoarse-voiced when it struck, and strong as the challenge of an old cock. Already it had struck nine, for they had been late in coming to supper, owing to Joe's long set-to with his conscience at the edge of the hazel-copse in the woods.

Joe got up, stretching his arms, yawning.

"Goin' to bed, heh?" asked Morgan.

"No, I don't seem to feel sleepy tonight," Joe replied.

He went into the kitchen and sat at the table, his elbows on the board, his head in his hands, as if turning over some difficult problem in his mind. Presently he fell to raking his shaggy hair with his long fingers; in a moment it was as disorderly as the swaths of clover hay lying out in the moonlight in the little stone-set field.

Morgan had filled his pipe, and was after a match at the box behind the stove, with the familiarity of a household inmate. He winked at Ollie, who was then pulling down her sleeves, her long day's work being done.

"Well, do you think you'll be elected?" he asked, lounging across to Joe, his hands in his pockets.

Morgan wore a shirt as gay-striped as a Persian tent, and he had removed his coat so the world, or such of it as was present in the kitchen, might behold it and admire. Joe withdrew his hands from his forelock and looked at Morgan curiously. The lad's eyes were sleep-heavy and red, and he was almost as dull-looking, perhaps, as Morgan imagined him to be.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I asked you if you thought you'd be elected this fall," repeated Morgan, in mock seriousness.

"I don't know what you mean," said Joe, turning from him indifferently.

"Why, ain't you runnin' for President on the squash-vine ticket?" asked Morgan. "I heard you was the can'idate."

Joe got up from the table and moved his chair away with his foot. As he was thus occupied he saw Ollie's shadow on the wall repeat a gesture of caution which she made to Morgan, a lifting of the hand, a shaking of the head. Even the shadow betrayed the intimate understanding between them. Joe went over and stood in the door.

"No use for you to try to be a fool, Morgan; that's been attended to for you already," said he.

There wasn't much heart in Morgan's laugh, but it would pass for one on account of the volume of sound.

"Oh, let a feller have his joke, won't you, Joe?" said he.

"Go ahead," granted Joe, leaning his shoulder against the jamb, facing out toward the dark.

Morgan went over and put his hand on the great lad's shoulder, with a show of friendly condescension.

"What would the world be without its jokes?" he asked. And then, before anybody could answer: "It'd be like home without a mother."

Joe faced him, a slow grin spreading back to his ears.

"Or a ready-reckoner," said he.

Morgan's laugh that time was unfeigned.

"Joe, you've missed your callin'," said he. "You've got no business foolin' away your time on a farm. With that solemn, long-hungry look of yours you ought to be sellin' consumption cure and ringbone ointment from the end of a wagon on the square in Kansas City."

"Or books, maybe," suggested Joe.

"No-o-o," said Morgan thoughtfully, "I wouldn't just say you're up to the level of books. But you might rise even to books if you'd cultivate your mind and brain. Well, I think I'll fly up to roost. I've got to take an early start in the morning and clean up on this neck of the woods tomorrow. Good night, folks."

"I don't suppose Isom'll be home tonight," Ollie ventured, as Morgan's feet sounded on the stairs.

"No, I guess not," Joe agreed, staring thoughtfully at the black oblong of the door.

"If he does come, I don't suppose it'll hurt him to eat something cold," she said.

"I'll wait up a while longer. If he comes I can warm up the coffee for him," Joe offered.

"Then I'll go to bed, too," she yawned wearily.

"Yes, you'd better go," said he.

Ollie's room, which was Isom's also when he was there, was in the front of the house, upstairs. Joe heard her feet along the hall, and her door close after her. Morgan was still tramping about in the room next to Joe's, where he slept. It was the best room in the house, better than the one shared by Isom and his wife, and in the end of the house opposite to it. Joe sat quietly at the table until Morgan's complaining bed-springs told him that the guest had retired. Then he mounted the narrow kitchen stairs to his own chamber.

Joe sat on the edge of his bed and pulled off his boots, dropping them noisily on the floor. Then, with shirt and trousers on, he drew the quilt from his bed, took his pillow under his arm, and opened the door into the hall which divided the house from end to end.

The moon was shining in through the double window in the end toward Ollie's room; it lay on the white floor, almost as bright as the sun. Within five feet of that splash of moonlight Joe spread his quilt. There he set his pillow and stretched his long body diagonally across the narrow hall, blocking it like a gate.

Joe roused Morgan next morning at dawn, and busied himself with making a fire in the kitchen stove and bringing water from the well until the guest came down to feed his horse. Morgan was in a crusty humor. He had very little to say, and Joe did not feel that the world was any poorer for his silence.

"This will be my last meal with you," announced Morgan at breakfast. "I'll not be back tonight."

Ollie was paler than usual, Joe noticed, and a cloud of dejection seemed to have settled over her during the night. She did not appear to be greatly interested in Morgan's statement, although she looked up from her breakfast with a little show of friendly politeness. Joe thought that she did not seem to care for the agent; the tightness in his breast was suddenly and gratefully eased.

"You haven't finished out your week, there'll be something coming to you on what you've paid in advance," said she.

"Let that go," said Morgan, obliterating all claim with a sweep of his hand.

"I think you'd better take back what's coming to you," suggested Joe.

Morgan turned to him with stiff severity.

"Are you the watch-dog of the old man's treasury?" he sneered.

"Maybe I am, for a day or two," returned Joe, "and if you step on me I'll bite."

He leveled his steady gray eyes at Morgan's shifting orbs, and held them there as if to drive in some hidden import of his words. Morgan seemed to understand. He colored, laughed shortly, and busied himself buttering a griddle-cake.

Ollie, pale and silent, had not looked up during this by-passage between the two men. Her manner was of one who expected something, which she dreaded and feared to face.

Morgan took the road early. Joe saw him go with a feeling of relief. He felt like a swollen barrel which had burst its close-binding hoops, he thought, as he went back to the place where he dropped his scythe yesterday.

As he worked through the long morning hours Joe struggled to adjust himself to the new conditions, resulting from the discovery of his own enlargement and understanding. It would be a harder matter now to go on living there with Ollie. Each day would be a trial by fire, the weeks and months a lengthening highway strewn with the embers of his own smoldering passion. Something might happen, almost any day, youth and youth together, galled by the same hand of oppression, that would overturn his peace forever. Yet, he could not leave. The bond of his mother's making, stamped with the seal of the law, held him captive there.

At length, after spending a harrowing morning over it, he reached the determination to stand up to it like a man, and serve Isom as long as he could do so without treason. When the day came that his spirit weakened and his continence failed, he would throw down the burden and desert. That he would do, even though his mother's hopes must fall and his own dreams of redeeming the place of his birth, to which he was attached by a sentiment almost poetic, must dissolve like vapor in the sun.

It was mid-afternoon when Joe finished his mowing and stood casting his eyes up to the sky for signs of rain. There being none, he concluded that it would be safe to allow yesterday's cutting to lie another night in the field while he put in the remainder of the day with his scythe in the lower orchard plot, where the clover grew rank among the trees.

Satisfied that he had made a showing thus far with which Isom could find no fault, Joe tucked the snath of his scythe under his arm and set out for that part of the orchard which lay beyond the hill, out of sight of the barn and house, and from that reason called the "lower orchard" by Isom, who had planted it with his own hand more than thirty years ago.

There noble wine-sap stretched out mighty arms to fondle willow-twig across the shady aisles, and maidenblush rubbed cheeks with Spitzenberg, all reddening in the sun. Under many of the trees the ground was as bare as if fire had devastated it, for the sun never fell through those close-woven branches from May to October, and there no clover grew. But in the open spaces between the rows it sprang rank and tall, troublesome to cut with a mower because of the low-swinging, fruit-weighted limbs.

Joe waded into this paradise of fruit and clover bloom, dark leaf and straining bough, stooping now and then to pick up a fallen apple and try its mellowness with his thumb. They were all hard, and fit only for cider yet, but their rich colors beguiled the eye into betrayal of the palate. Joe fixed his choice upon a golden willow-twig. As he stood rubbing the apple on his sleeve, his eye running over the task ahead of him in a rough estimate of the time it would require to clean up the clover, he started at sight of a white object dangling from a bough a few rods ahead of him. His attention curiously held, he went forward to investigate, when a little start of wind swung the object out from the limb and he saw that it was a woman's sun-bonnet, hanging basket-wise by its broad strings. There was no question whose it was; he had seen the same bonnet hanging in the kitchen not three hours before, fresh from the ironing board.

Joe dropped his apple unbitten, and strode forward, puzzled a bit over the circumstance. He wondered what had brought Ollie down there, and where she was then. She never came to that part of the orchard to gather wind-falls for the pigs—she was not gathering them at all during Isom's absence, he had relieved her of that—and there was nothing else to call her away from the house at that time of the day.

The lush clover struck him mid-thigh, progress through it was difficult. Joe lifted his feet like an Indian, toes turned in a bit, and this method of walking made it appear as if he stalked something, for he moved without noise.

He had dropped his scythe with the apple, his eyes held Ollie's swinging bonnet as he approached it as if it were some rare bird which he hoped to steal upon and take. Thus coming on, with high-lifted feet, his breath short from excitement, Joe was within ten yards of the bonnet when a voice sounded behind the intervening screen of clover and boughs.

Joe dropped in his tracks, as if ham-strung, crouched in the clover, pressed his hands to his mouth to stifle the groan that rose to his lips. It was Morgan's voice. He had come sneaking back while the watch-dog was off guard, secure in the belief that he had gone away. As Joe crouched there hidden in the clover, trembling and cold with anger, Morgan's voice rose in a laugh.

"Well, I wouldn't have given him credit for that much sense if I hadn't seen him with my own eyes," said he.

"He's smarter than he looks," said Ollie, their voices distinct in Joe's shamed ears, for it was as quiet in the orchard as on the first day.

They both laughed over what she said.

"He thinks I'm gone, he'll go to bed early tonight," said Morgan. "Don't bother about bringing anything with you."

"Not even my diamonds?" she laughed.

Morgan's gruffer mirth joined her, and Joe found himself straining to hear, although he despised himself for spying and eavesdropping, even on guilt.

"We can get on without the diamonds," said Morgan, "and I don't suppose you've got any ball dresses or sealskin cloaks?"

"Three calico wrappers that he's bought me, and a dress or two that I had when I came," said Ollie, bitterly.

"You'll have all you want in a day or two, honey," said Morgan, in comforting voice.

They were silent a while; then Joe heard her ask the time. Morgan told her it was half-past four.

"Oh, I had no idea it was that late—time goes so fast when I'm with you! I must go back to the house now, Joe might come in and find me gone."

"Yes, I'd like to wring his damned neck!" said Morgan.

"He's a good boy, Curtis," she defended, but with lightness, "but he's a little——"

She held her words back coquettishly.

"Heh?" queried Morgan.

"Jealous, you old goose! Can't you see it?"

Morgan had a great laugh over that. From the sound of his voice Joe knew that he was standing, and his whole body ached with the fear that they would discover him lying there in the clover. Not that he was afraid of Morgan, but that he dreaded the humiliation which Ollie must suffer in knowing that her guilty tryst had been discovered.

"I'll meet you at the gate, I'll have the buggy on down the road a little ways," Morgan told her. "There's only a little while between you and liberty now, sweetheart."

Joe dared not look up nor move, but he needed no eyes to know that Morgan kissed her then. After that he heard her running away toward the house. Morgan stood there a little while, whistling softly. Soon Joe heard him going in the direction of the road.

Morgan was quite a distance ahead when Joe sprang out of his concealment and followed him, for he wanted to give Ollie time to pass beyond ear-shot of the orchard. As Joe made no attempt to smother the sound of his feet, Morgan heard him while he was still several yards behind him. He turned, stopped, and waited for Joe to come up.

Joe's agitation was plain in his face, his shocked eyes stared out of its pallor as if they had looked upon violence and death.

"What's the matter, kid?" inquired Morgan carelessly.

"I've got something to say to you," answered Joe thickly. He was panting, more from rage than exertion; his hands trembled.

Morgan looked him over from boots to bandless hat with the same evidence of curiosity as a person displays when turning some washed-up object with the foot on the sands. It was as if he had but an abstract interest in the youth, a feeling which the incident had obtruded upon him without penetrating the reserve of his private cogitations.

"Kid, you look like you'd seen a snake," said he.

"You let that woman alone—you've got to let her alone, I tell you!" said Joe with explosive suddenness, his passion out of hand.

Morgan's face grew red.

"Mind your own business, you sneakin' skunk!" said he.

"I am minding it," said Joe; "but maybe not as well as I ought to 'a' done. Isom left me here in his place to watch and look after things, but you've sneaked in under my arm like a dirty, thieving dog, and you've—you've——"

Morgan thrust his fist before Joe's face.

"That'll do now—that'll do out of you!" he threatened.

Joe caught Morgan's wrist with a quick, snapping movement, and slowly bent the threatening arm down, Morgan struggling, foot to foot with him in the test of strength. Joe held the captured arm down for a moment, and they stood breast to breast, glaring into each other's eyes. Then with a wrench that spun Morgan half round and made him stagger, Joe flung his arm free.

"Now, you keep away from here—keep away!" he warned, his voice growing thin and boyish in the height of his emotion, as if it would break in the treble shallows.

"Don't fool with me or I'll hurt you," said Morgan. "Keep your nose——"

"Let her alone!" commanded Joe sternly, his voice sinking again even below its accustomed level, gruff and deep in his chest. "I heard you—I didn't mean to, but I couldn't help it—and I know what you're up to tonight. Don't come around here tonight after her, for I'm not going to let her go."

"Ya-a, you pup, you pup!" said Morgan nastily.

"It's a hard life for her here—I know that better than you do," said Joe, passing over the insult, "but you can't give her any better—not as good. What you've done can't be undone now, but I can keep you from dragging her down any further. Don't you come back here tonight!"

"If you keep your fingers out of the fire," said Morgan, looking at the ground, rolling a fallen apple with his toe, "you'll not get scorched. You stick to your knittin' and don't meddle with mine. That'll be about the healthiest thing you can do!"

"If Isom knew what you've done he'd kill you—if he's even half a man," said Joe. "She was a good woman till you came, you hound!"

"She's a good woman yet," said Morgan, with some feeling, "too good for that old hell-dog she's married to!"

"Then let her stay good—at least as good as she is," advised Joe.

"Oh, hell!" said Morgan disgustedly.

"You can't have her," persisted Joe.

"We'll see about that, too," said Morgan, his manner and voice threatening. "What're you goin' to do—pole off and tell the old man?"

"I'll do what Isom left me here to do, the rest of the time he's away," said Joe. "Ollie shan't leave the house tonight."

"Yes, you flat-bellied shad, you want her yourself—you're stuck on her yourself, you fool! Yes, and you've got just about as much show of gittin' her as I have of jumpin' over that tree!" derided Morgan.

"No matter what I think of her, good or bad, she'd be safe with me," Joe told him, searching his face accusingly.

"Yes, of course she would!" scoffed Morgan. "You're one of these saints that'll live all your life by a punkin and never poke it with your finger. Oh, yes, I know your kind!"

"I'm not going to quarrel with you, Morgan, unless you make me," said Joe; "but you've got the wrong end of the stick. I don't want her, not the way you do, anyhow."

Morgan looked at him closely, then put out his hand with a gesture of conciliation.

"I'll take that back, Joe," said he. "You're not that kind of a kid. You mean well, but you don't understand. Look-a here, let me tell you, Joe: I love that little woman, kid, just as honest and true as any man could love her, and she thinks the world and all of me. I only want to take her away from here because I love her and want to make her happy. Don't you see it, kid?"

"How would you do that? You couldn't marry her."

"Not for a while, of course," admitted Morgan. "But the old possum he'd get a divorce in a little while."

"Well, I'm not going to let her go," Joe declared, turning away as if that settled the matter for good and all. "You've done—I could kill you for what you've done!" said he, with sudden vehemence.

Morgan looked at him curiously, his careless face softening.

"Now, see here, don't you look at it that way, Joe," he argued. "I'm not so bad; neither is Ollie. You'll understand these matters better when you're older and know more about the way men feel. She wanted love, and I gave her love. She's been worked to rags and bones by that old devil; and what I've done, and what I want to do, is in kindness, Joe. I'll take her away from here and provide for her like she was a queen, I'll give her the love and comradeship of a young man and make her happy, Joe. Don't you see?"

"But you can't make her respectable," said Joe. "I'm not going to let her leave with you, or go to you. If she wants to go after Isom comes back, then let her. But not before. Now, you'd better go on away, Morgan, before I lose my temper. I was mad when I started after you, but I've cooled down. Don't roil me up again. Go on your way, and leave that woman alone."

"Joe, you're a man in everything but sense," said Morgan, not unkindly, "and I reckon if you and I was to clinch we'd raise a purty big dust and muss things around a right smart. And I don't know who'd come out on top at the finish, neither. So I don't want to have any trouble with you. All I ask of you is step to one side and leave us two alone in what we've started to do and got all planned to carry out. Go to bed tonight and go to sleep. You're not supposed to know that anything's due to happen, and if you sleep sound you'll find a twenty-dollar bill under your hat in the morning."

The suggestion brought a blush to Joe's face. He set his lips as if fighting down hot words before he spoke.

"If I have to tie her I'll do it," said Joe earnestly. "She shan't leave. And if I have to take down that old gun from the kitchen wall to keep you away from here till Isom comes home, I'll take it down. You can come to the gate tonight if you want to, but if you do——"

Joe looked him straight in the eyes. Morgan's face lost its color. He turned as if to see that his horse was still standing, and stood that way a little while.

"I guess I'll drive on off, Joe," said Morgan with a sigh, as if he had reached the conclusion after a long consideration.

"All right," said Joe.

"No hard feelin's left behind me?" facing Joe again with his old, self-assured smile. He offered his hand, but Joe did not take it.

"As long as you never come back," said Joe.

Morgan walked to the fence, his head bent, thoughtfully. Joe followed, as if to satisfy himself that the wily agent was not going to work some subterfuge, having small faith in his promise to leave, much less in the probability that he would stay away.

Joe stood at the fence, looking after Morgan, long after the dust of his wheels had settled again to the road. At last he went back to the place where he had dropped his scythe, and cut a swath straight through to the tree where Ollie's bonnet had hung. And there he mowed the trampled clover, and obliterated her footprints with his own.

The weight of his discovery was like some dead thing on his breast. He felt that Ollie had fallen from the high heaven of his regard, never to mount to her place again. But Isom did not know of this bitter thing, this shameful shadow at his door. As far as it rested with him to hold the secret in his heart, poison though it was to him, Isom should never know.



CHAPTER VI

BLOOD

Joe had debated the matter fully in his mind before going in to supper. Since he had sent her tempter away, there was no necessity of taking Ollie to task, thus laying bare his knowledge of her guilty secret. He believed that her conscience would prove its own flagellant in the days to come, when she had time to reflect and repent, away from the debauching influence of the man who had led her astray. His blame was all for Morgan, who had taken advantage of her loneliness and discontent.

Joe now recalled, and understood, her reaching out to him for sympathy; he saw clearly that she had demanded something beyond the capacity of his unseasoned heart to give. Isom was to blame for that condition of her mind, first and most severely of all. If Isom had been kind to her, and given her only a small measure of human sympathy, she would have clung to him, and rested in the shelter of his protection, content against all the world. Isom had spread the thorns for his own feet, in his insensibility to all human need of gentleness.

Joe even doubted, knowing him as he did, whether the gray old miser was capable of either jealousy or shame. He did not know, indeed, what Isom might say to it if his wife's infidelity became known to him, but he believed that he would rage to insanity. Perhaps not because the sting of it would penetrate to his heart, but in his censure of his wife's extravagance in giving away an affection which belonged, under the form of marriage and law, to him.

Joe was ashamed to meet Ollie at the table, not for himself, but for her. He was afraid that his eyes, or his manner, might betray what he knew. He might have spared himself this feeling of humiliation on her account, for Ollie, all unconscious of his discovery, was bright and full of smiles. Joe could not rise to her level of light-heartedness, and, there being no common ground between them, he lapsed into his old-time silence over his plate.

After supper Joe flattened himself against the kitchen wall where he had sat the night before on the bench outside the door, drawing back into the shadow. There he sat and thought it over again, unsatisfied to remain silent, yet afraid to speak. He did not want to be unjust, for perhaps she did not intend to meet Morgan at all. In addition to this doubt of her intentions, he had the hope that Isom would come very soon. He decided at length that he would go to bed and lie awake until he heard Ollie pass up to her room, when he would slip down again and wait. If she came down, he would know that she intended to carry out her part of the compact with Morgan. Then he could tell her that Morgan would not come.

Ollie was not long over her work that night. When Joe heard her door close, he took his boots in his hand and went downstairs. He had left his hat on the kitchen table, according to his nightly custom; the moonlight coming in through the window reminded him of it as he passed. He put it on, thinking that he would take a look around the road in the vicinity of the gate, for he suspected that Morgan's submissive going masked some iniquitous intent. Joe pulled on his boots, sitting in the kitchen door, listening a moment before he closed it after him, and walked softly toward the road.

A careful survey as far as he could see in the bright moonlight, satisfied him that Morgan had not left his horse and buggy around there anywhere. He might come later. Joe decided to wait around there and see.

It was a cool autumn night; a prowling wind moved silently. Over hedgerow and barn roof the moonlight lay in white radiance; the dusty highway beyond the gate was changed by it into a royal road. Joe felt that there were memories abroad as he rested his arms on the gate-post. Moonlight and a soft wind always moved him with a feeling of indefinite and shapeless tenderness, as elusive as the echo of a song. There was a soothing quality in the night for him, which laved his bruised sensibilities like balm. He expanded under its influence; the tumult of his breast began to subside.

The revelations of that day had fallen rudely upon the youth's delicately tuned and finely adjusted nature. He had recoiled in horror from the sacrilege which that house had suffered. In a measure he felt that he was guilty along with Ollie in her unspeakable sin, in that he had been so stupid as to permit it.

But, he reflected as he waited there with his hand upon the weathered gate, great and terrible as the upheaval of his day-world had been, the night had descended unconscious of it. The moonlight had brightened untroubled by it; the wind had come from its wooded places unhurried for it, and unvexed. After all, it had been only an unheard discord in the eternal, vast harmony. The things of men were matters of infinitesimal consequence in nature. The passing of a nation of men would not disturb its tranquillity as much as the falling of a leaf.

It was then long past the hour when he was habitually asleep, and his vigil weighed on him heavily. No one had passed along the road; Morgan had not come in sight. Joe was weary from his day's internal conflict and external toil. He began to consider the advisability of returning to bed.

Perhaps, thought he, his watch was both futile and unjust. Ollie did not intend to keep her part in the agreement. She must be burning with remorse for her transgression.

He turned and walked slowly toward the house, stopping a little way along to look back and make sure that Morgan had not appeared. Thus he stood a little while, and then resumed his way.

The house was before him, shadows in the sharp angles of its roof, its windows catching the moonlight like wakeful eyes. There was a calm over it, and a somnolent peace. It seemed impossible that iniquitous desires could live and grow on a night like that. Ollie must be asleep, said he, and repentant in her dreams.

Joe felt that he might go to his rest with honesty. It would be welcome, as the desire of tired youth for its bed is strong. At the well he stopped again to look back for Morgan.

As he turned a light flashed in the kitchen, gleamed a moment, went out suddenly. It was as if a match had been struck to look for something quickly found, and then blown out with a puff of breath.

At once the fabric of his hopes collapsed, and his honest attempts to lift Ollie back to her smirched pedestal and invest her with at least a part of her former purity of heart, came to a painful end. She was preparing to leave. The hour when he must speak had come.

He approached the door noiselessly. It was closed, as he had left it, and within everything was still. As he stood hesitating before it, his hand lifted to lay upon the latch, his heart laboring in painful lunges against his ribs, it opened without a sound, and Ollie stood before him against the background of dark.

The moonlight came down on him through the half-bare arbor, and fell in mottled patches around him where he stood, his hand still lifted, as if to help her on her way. Ollie caught her breath in a frightened start, and shrank back.

"You don't need to be afraid, Ollie—it's Joe," said he.

"Oh, you scared me so!" she panted.

Each then waited as if for the other to speak, and the silence seemed long.

"Were you going out somewhere?" asked Joe.

"No; I forgot to put away a few things, and I came down," said she. "I woke up out of my sleep thinking of them," she added.

"Well!" said he, wonderingly. "Can I help you any, Ollie?"

"No; it's only some milk and things," she told him. "You know how Isom takes on if he finds anything undone. I was afraid he might come in tonight and see them."

"Well!" said Joe again, in a queer, strained way.

He was standing in the door, blocking it with his body, clenching the jamb with his hands on either side, as if to bar any attempt that she might make to pass.

"Will you strike a light, Ollie? I want to have a talk with you," said he gravely.

"Oh, Joe!" she protested, as if pleasantly scandalized by the request, intentionally misreading it.

"Have you got another match in your hand? Light the lamp."

"Oh, what's the use?" said she. "I only ran down for a minute. We don't need the light, do we, Joe? Can't you talk without it?"

"No; I want you to light the lamp," he insisted.

"I'll not do it!" she flared suddenly, turning as if to go to her room. "You've not got any right to boss me around in my own house!"

"I don't suppose I have, Ollie, and I didn't mean to," said he, stepping into the room.

Ollie retreated a few steps toward the inner door, and stopped. Joe could hear her excited breathing as he flung his hat on the table.

"Ollie, what I've got to say to you has to be said sooner or later tonight, and you'd just as well hear it now," said Joe, trying to assure her of his friendly intent by speaking softly, although his voice was tremulous. "Morgan's gone; he'll not be back—at least not tonight."

"Morgan?" said she. "What do you mean—what do I care where he's gone?"

Joe made no reply. He fumbled for the box behind the stove and scraped a slow sulphur match against the pipe. Its light discovered Ollie shrinking against the wall where she had stopped, near the door.

She was wearing a straw hat, which must have been a part of her bridal gear. A long white veil, which she wore scarf-wise over the front display of its flowers and fruits, came down and crossed behind her neck. Its ends dangled upon her breast. The dress was one that Joe never had seen her wear before, a girlish white thing with narrow ruffles. He wondered as he looked at her with a great ache in his heart, how so much seeming purity could be so base and foul. In that bitter moment he cursed old Isom in his heart for goading her to this desperate bound. She had been starving for a man's love, and for the lack of it she had thrown herself away on a dog.

Joe fitted the chimney on the burner of the lamp, and stood in judicial seriousness before her, the stub of the burning match wasting in a little blaze between his fingers.

"Morgan's gone," he repeated, "and he'll never come back. I know all about you two, and what you'd planned to do."

Joe dropped the stub of the match and set his foot on it.

Ollie stared at him, her face as white as her bridal dress, her eyes big, like a barn-yard animal's eyes in a lantern's light. She was gathering and wadding the ends of her veil in her hands; her lips were open, showing the points of her small, white teeth.

"Isom—he'll kill me!" she whispered.

"Isom don't know about it," said Joe.

"You'll tell him!"

"No."

Relief flickered in her face. She leaned forward a little, eagerly, as if to speak, but said nothing. Joe shrank back from her, his hand pressing heavily upon the table.

"I never meant to tell him," said he slowly.

She sprang toward him, her hands clasped appealingly.

"Then you'll let me go, you'll let me go?" she cried eagerly. "I can't stay here," she hurried on, "you know I can't stay here, Joe, and suffer like he's made me suffer the past year! You say Morgan won't come——"

"The coward, to try to steal a man's wife, and deceive you that way, too!" said Joe, his anger rising.

"Oh, you don't know him as well as I do!" she defended, shaking her head solemnly. "He's so grand, and good, and I love him, Joe—oh, Joe, I love him!"

"It's wrong for you to say that!" Joe harshly reproved her. "I don't want to hear you say that; you're Isom's wife."

"Yes, God help me," said she.

"You could be worse off than you are, Ollie; as it is you've got a name!"

"What's a name when you despise it?" said she bitterly.

"Have you thought what people would say about you if you went away with Morgan, Ollie?" inquired Joe gently.

"I don't care. We intend to go to some place where we're not known, and——"

"Hide," said Joe. "Hide like thieves. And that's what you'd be, both of you, don't you see? You'd never be comfortable and happy, Ollie, skulking around that way."

"Yes, I would be happy," she maintained sharply. "Mr. Morgan is a gentleman, and he's good. He'd be proud of me, he'd take care of me like a lady."

"For a little while maybe, till he found somebody else that he thought more of," said Joe. "When it comes so easy to take one man's wife, he wouldn't stop at going off with another."

"It's a lie—you know it's a lie! Curtis Morgan's a gentleman, I tell you, and I'll not hear you run him down!"

"Gentlemen and ladies don't have to hide," said Joe.

"You're lying to me!" she charged him suddenly, her face coloring angrily. "He wouldn't go away from here on the say-so of a kid like you. He's down there waiting for me, and I'm going to him."

"I wouldn't deceive you, Ollie," said he, leaving his post near the door, opening a way for her to pass. "If you think he's there, go and see. But I tell you he's gone. He asked me to shut my eyes to this thing and let you and him carry it out; but I couldn't do that, so he went away."

She knew he was not deceiving her, and she turned on him with reproaches.

"You want to chain me here and see me work myself to death for that old miserly Isom!" she stormed. "You're just as bad as he is; you ain't got a soft spot in your heart."

"Yes, I'd rather see you stay here with Isom and do a nigger woman's work, like you have been doing ever since you married him, than let you go away with Morgan for one mistaken day. What you'd have to face with him would kill you quicker than work, and you'd suffer a thousand times more sorrow."

"What do you know about it?" she sneered. "You never loved anybody. That's the way with you religious fools—you don't get any fun out of life yourselves, and you want to spoil everybody else's. Well, you'll not spoil mine, I tell you. I'll go to Morgan this very night, and you can't stop me!"

"Well, we'll see about that, Ollie," he told her, showing a little temper. "I told him that I'd keep you here if I had to tie you, and I'll do that, too, if I have to. Isom——"

"Isom, Isom!" she mocked. "Well, tell Isom you spied on me and tell the old fool what you saw—tell him, tell him! Tell him all you know, and tell him more! Tell the old devil I hate him, and always did hate him; tell him I've got out of bed in the middle of the night more than once to get the ax and kill him in his sleep! Tell him I wish he was dead and in hell, where he belongs, and I'm sorry I didn't send him there! What do I care about Isom, or you, or anybody else, you spy, you sneaking spy!"

"I'll go with you to the road if you want to see if he's there," Joe offered.

Ollie's fall from the sanctified place of irreproachable womanhood had divested her of all awe in his eyes. He spoke to her now as he would have reasoned with a child.

"No, I suppose you threatened to go after Isom, or something like that, and he went away," said she. "You couldn't scare him, he wouldn't run from you. Tomorrow he'll send me word, and I'll go to him in spite of you and Isom and everything else. I don't care—I don't care—you're mean to me, too! you're as mean as you can be!"

She made a quick tempestuous turn from anger to tears, lifting her arm to her face and hiding her eyes in the bend of her elbow. Her shoulders heaved; she sobbed in childlike pity for herself and the injury which she seemed to think she bore.

Joe put his hand on her shoulder.

"Don't take on that way about it, Ollie," said he.

"Oh, oh!" she moaned, her hands pressed to her face now; "why couldn't you have been kind to me; why couldn't you have said a good word to me sometimes? I didn't have a friend in the world, and I was so lonesome and tired and—and—and—everything!"

Her reproachful appeal was disconcerting to Joe. How could he tell her that he had not understood her striving and yearning to reach him, and that at last understanding, he had been appalled by the enormity of his own heart's desire. He said nothing for a little while, but took her by one tear-wet hand and led her away from the door. Near the table he stopped, still holding her hand, stroking it tenderly with comforting touch.

"Never mind, Ollie," said he at last; "you go to bed now and don't think any more about going away with Morgan. If I thought it was best for your peace and happiness for you to go, I'd step out of the way at once. But he'd drag you down, Ollie, lower than any woman you ever saw, for they don't have that kind of women here. Morgan isn't as good a man as Isom is, with all his hard ways and stinginess. If he's honest and honorable, he can wait for you till Isom dies. He'll not last more than ten or fifteen years longer, and you'll be young even then, Ollie. I don't suppose anybody ever gets too old to be happy any more than they get too old to be sad."

"No, I don't suppose they do, Joe," she sighed.

She had calmed down while he talked. Now she wiped her eyes on her veil, while the last convulsions of sobbing shook her now and then, like the withdrawing rumble of thunder after a storm.

"I'll put out the light, Ollie," said he. "You go on to bed."

"Oh, Joe, Joe!" said she in a little pleading, meaningless way; a little way of reproach and softness.

She lifted her tear-bright eyes, with the reflection of her subsiding passion in them, and looked yearningly into his. Ollie suddenly found herself feeling small and young, penitent and frail, in the presence of this quickly developed man. His strength seemed to rise above her, and spread round her, and warm her in its protecting folds. There was comfort in him, and promise.

The wife of the dead viking could turn to the living victor with a smile. It is a comforting faculty that has come down from the first mother to the last daughter; it is as ineradicable in the sex as the instinct which cherishes fire. Ollie was primitive in her passions and pains. If she could not have Morgan, perhaps she could yet find a comforter in Joe. She put her free hand on his shoulder and looked up into his face again. Tears were on her lashes, her lips were loose and trembling.

"If you'd be good to me, Joe; if you'd only be good and kind, I could stay," she said.

Joe was moved to tenderness by her ingenuous sounding plea. He put his hand on her shoulder in a comforting way. She was very near him then, and her small hand, so lately cold and tear-damp, was warm within his. She threw her head back in expectant attitude; her yearning eyes seemed to be dragging him to her lips.

"I will be good to you, Ollie; just as good and kind as I know how to be," he promised.

She swayed a little nearer; her warm, soft body pressed against him, her bright young eyes still striving to draw him down to her lips.

"Oh, Joe, Joe," she murmured in a snuggling, contented way.

Sweat sprang upon his forehead and his throbbing temples, so calm and cool but a moment before. He stood trembling, his damp elf-locks dangling over his brow. Through the half-open door a little breath of wind threaded in and made the lamp-blaze jump; it rustled outside through the lilac-bushes like the passing of a lady's gown.

Joe's voice was husky in his throat when he spoke.

"You'd better go to bed, Ollie," said he.

He still clung foolishly to her willing hand as he led her to the door opening to the stairs.

"No, you go on up first, Joe," she said. "I want to put the wood in the stove ready to light in the morning, and set a few little things out. It'll give me a minute longer to sleep. You can trust me now, Joe," she protested, looking earnestly into his eyes, "for I'm not going away with Morgan now."

"I'm glad to hear you say that, Ollie," he told her, unfeigned pleasure in his voice.

"I want you to promise me you'll never tell Isom," said she.

"I never intended to tell him," he replied.

She withdrew her hand from his quickly, and quickly both of them fled to his shoulders.

"Stoop down," she coaxed with a seductive, tender pressure of her hands, "and tell me, Joe."

Isom's step fell on the porch. He crashed the door back against the wall as he came in, and Joe and Ollie fell apart in guilty haste. Isom stood for a moment on the threshold, amazement in his staring eyes and open mouth. Then a cloud of rage swept him, he lifted his huge, hairy fist above his head like a club.

"I'll kill you!" he threatened, covering the space between him and Joe in two long strides.

Ollie shrank away, half stooping, from the expected blow, her hands raised in appealing defense. Joe put up his open hand as if to check Isom in his assault.

"Hold on, Isom; don't you hit me," he said.

Whatever Isom's intention had been, he contained himself. He stopped, facing Joe, who did not yield an inch.

"Hit you, you whelp!" said Isom, his lips flattened back from his teeth. "I'll do more than hit you. You—" He turned on Ollie: "I saw you. You've disgraced me! I'll break every bone in your body! I'll throw you to the hogs!"

"If you'll hold on a minute and listen to reason, Isom, you'll find there's nothing at all like you think there is," said Joe. "You're making a mistake that you may be sorry for."

"Mistake!" repeated Isom bitterly, as if his quick-rising rage had sunk again and left him suddenly weak. "Yes, the mistake I made was when I took you in to save you from the poorhouse and give you a home. I go away for a day and come back to find you two clamped in each other's arms so close together I couldn't shove a hand between you. Mistake——"

"That's not so, Isom," Joe protested indignantly.

"Heaven and hell, didn't I see you!" roared Isom. "There's law for you two if I want to take it on you, but what's the punishment of the law for what you've done on me? Law! No, by God! I'll make my own law for this case. I'll kill both of you if I'm spared to draw breath five minutes more!"

Isom lifted his long arm in witness of his terrible intention, and cast his glaring eyes about the room as if in search of a weapon to begin his work.

"I tell you, Isom, nothing wrong ever passed between me and your wife," insisted Joe earnestly. "You're making a terrible mistake."

Ollie, shrinking against the wall, looked imploringly at Joe. He had promised never to tell Isom what he knew, but how was he to save himself now without betraying her? Was he man enough to face it out and bear the strain, rush upon old Isom and stop him in his mad intention, or would he weaken and tell all he knew, here at the very first test of his strength? She could not read his intention in his face, but his eyes were frowning under his gathered brows as he watched every move that old Isom made. He was leaning forward a little, his arms were raised, like a wrestler waiting for the clinch.

Isom's face was as gray as ashes that have lain through many a rain. He stood where he had stopped at Joe's warning, and now was pulling up his sleeves as if to begin his bloody work.

"You two conspired against me from the first," he charged, his voice trembling; "you conspired to eat me holler, and now you conspire to bring shame and disgrace to my gray hairs. I trust you and depend on you, and I come home——"

Isom's arraignment broke off suddenly.

He stood with arrested jaw, gazing intently at the table. Joe followed his eyes, but saw nothing on the table to hold a man's words and passions suspended in that strange manner. Nothing was there but the lamp and Joe's old brown hat. That lay there, its innocent, battered crown presenting to Joe's eyes, its broad and pliant brim tilted up on the farther side as if resting on a fold of itself.

It came to Joe in an instant that Isom's anger had brought paralysis upon him. He started forward to assist him, Isom's name on his lips, when Isom leaped to the table with a smothered cry in his throat. He seemed to hover over the table a moment, leaning with his breast upon it, gathering some object to him and hugging it under his arm.

"Great God!" panted Isom in shocked voice, standing straight between them, his left arm pressed to his breast as if it covered a mortal wound. He twisted his neck and glared at Joe, but he did not disclose the thing that he had gathered from the table.