CHAPTER IXTHE SEALED ENVELOPE

152CHAPTER IXTHE SEALED ENVELOPE

In the light of Joe’s reluctant testimony and his strange, stubborn, and stiff-necked refusal to go into the matter of the quarrel between himself and Isom; the unexplained mystery of the money which had been found in the burst bag on Isom’s breast; and Joe’s declaration that he had not seen it until Isom fell: in the light of all this, the people of that community believed the verdict of the coroner’s jury to be just.This refusal of Joe’s to talk out and explain everything was a display of the threadbare Newbolt dignity, people said, an exhibition of which they had not seen since old Peter’s death. But it looked more like bull-headedness to them.“Don’t the darned fool know he’s pokin’ his head under the gallus?” they asked.What was the trouble between him and Isom about? What was he doin’ there in the kitchen with the lamp lit that hour of the night? Where did that there money come from, gentlemen? That’s what I want you to tellme!Those were the questions which were being asked, man to man, group to group, and which nobody could answer, as they stood discussing it after Joe had been taken away to jail. The coroner mingled with them, giving them the weight of his experience.“That Newbolt’s deeper than he looks on the outside, gentlemen,” he said, shaking his serious whiskers. “There’s a lot more behind this case than we can see. Old Isom Chase was murdered, and that murder was planned away ahead. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody on the witness-stand153as shrewd and sharp as that Newbolt boy. He knew just what to so say and just what to shut his jaws on. But we’ll fetch it out of him–or somebody else.”As men went home to take up their neglected tasks, they talked it all over. They wondered what Joe would have done with that money if he had succeeded in getting away with it; whether he would have made it out of the country, or whether the invincible Bill Frost, keen on his scent as a fox-hound, would have pursued him and brought him back.They wondered how high they built the gallows to hang a man, and discussed the probability of the event being public. They speculated on the manner in which Joe would go to his death, whether boldly, with his head up that way, or cringing and afraid, his proud heart and spirit broken, and whether he would confess at the end or carry his secret with him to the grave. Then they branched off into discussions of the pain of hanging, and wondered whether it was a “more horribler” death than drowning or burning in a haystack, or from eating pounded glass.It was a great, moving, awakening sensation in the countryside, that taking off of Isom Chase by a mysterious midnight shot. It pulled people up out of the drowse of a generation, and set them talking as they had not talked in twenty years. Their sluggish brains were heated by it, their sleeping hearts quickened.People were of the undivided opinion that Isom had caught Joe robbing him, and that Joe had shot him in the fear of punishment for the theft. Perhaps it is because chivalry is such a rare quality among the business activities of this life, that none of them believed he was shielding Isom’s wife, and that he was innocent of any wrong himself. They did not approve the attempt of the coroner to drag her into it. The shrewd insight of the little man cost him a good many votes that day.154Joe Newbolt could very well be a robber, they said, for all his life had prepared him for a fall before the temptation of money. He could very well be a robber, indeed, and there was no room for him to turn out anything nobler, for wasn’t he the pore folks’ boy?Ollie was almost as short in her realization of what Joe had done for her as those who knew nothing at all of his motive of silence. In the relief of her escape from public disclosure of her intrigue with Morgan, she enjoyed a luxurious relaxation. It was like sleep after long watching.She did not understand the peril in which Joe stood on her account, nor consider that the future still held for both of them a trial which would test Joe’s strength as the corrosive tooth of acid challenges the purity of gold. It was enough for her that sunny afternoon, and sufficient to her shallow soul, to know that she was safe. She lay warm and restful in her bed while the neighbor women set the house to rights, and the men moved Isom’s body into the parlor to wait for the coffin which Sol Greening had gone after to the county-seat.Ollie watched the little warm white clouds against the blue of the October sky, and thought of the fleecy soft things which a mother loves to swaddle her baby in; she watched the shadow of falling leaves upon the floor, blowing past her window on the slant sunbeams.She was safe!Joe was accused, but she seemed to hold that a trivial incident in an exciting day. It would pass; he would clear himself, as he deserved to be cleared, and then, when Morgan came back for her and carried her away into his world, everything would be in tune.Perhaps it was because she knew that Joe was innocent that his accusation appeared so untenable and trivial to her. At any rate, the lawyers over at Shelbyville–wasn’t their155cunning known around the world–could get him off. If it came to that, she would see that he had a good one, as good as money could employ. Joe had stood by her; she would stand by Joe. That was the extent of her concern that afternoon.It was pleasant to stretch there in peace, with no task before her, no rude summons to arise and work. Isom would call her no more at dawn; his voice would be silent in that house forever more. There was no regret in the thought, no pang, no pain.As one lives his life, so he must be pitied in death. Soft deeds father soft memories. There never was but one man who rose with the recollection of pleasant dreams from pillowing his head upon a stone, and that man was under the hand of God. Isom Chase had planted bitterness; his memory was gall.She was safe, and she was free. She had come into her expectations; the pre-nuptial dreams of enjoying Isom Chase’s wealth were suddenly at hand.Together with the old rifle and Isom’s blood-stained garments, the coroner had taken away the little bag of gold, to be used as evidence, he said. He had taken the money, just as it was in the little sack, a smear of blood on it, after counting it before witnesses and giving her a receipt for the amount. Two thousand dollars; one hundred pieces of twenty dollars each. That was the tale of the contents of the canvas bag which had lain grinning on Isom’s pulseless heart. It was not a great amount of money, considering Isom’s faculty for gaining and holding it. It was the general belief that he had ten, twenty, times that amount, besides his loans, hidden away, and the secret of his hiding-place had gone out of the world with Isom.Others said that he had put his money into lands, pointing to the many farms which he owned and rented in the county.156But be that as it might, there was Ollie, young and handsome, well paid for her hard year as Isom’s wife, free now, and doubtless already willing at heart to make some young man happy. Nobody blamed her for that.It was well known that Isom had abused her, that her life had been cheerless and lonely under his roof. Those who did not know it from first-hand facts believed it on the general notoriety of the man. Contact with Isom Chase had been like sleeping on a corn-husk bed; there was no comfort in it, no matter which way one turned.Ollie, her eyes closed languidly, now languidly opened to follow the track of the lamb-fleece clouds, her young body feeling warm and pleasant, as if lately released from a sorely cramped state; Ollie, with little fleeting dreams in her pretty, shallow head, was believed by the women of the neighborhood to be in the way of realizing on Isom’s expectations of an heir. It was a little fiction that had taken its beginning from Sol Greening’s early talk, and owing to that rumor the coroner had been gentle with her beyond the inclination of his heart.The young widow smiled as she lay on her pillow and thought of the little intimate touches of tenderness which this baseless rumor had made her the beneficiary of at her neighbor’s hands. She was selfish enough to take advantage of their mistaken kindnesses and to surrender to their vigorous elbows the work below stairs. That was her day of freedom; it was her dawn of peace.It was pleasant to have come through stress and hardship to this restful eddy in the storm of life; to have faced peril and disgrace and come away still clean in the eyes of men. Ollie was content with things as they were, as the evening shadows closed the door upon the events of that trying day.Quite different was the case of Sarah Newbolt, once more back in her poor shelter, nested in bramble and clambering157vine. She was dazed, the song was gone out of her heart. She was bereaved, and her lips were moving in endless repetition of supplication to the Almighty for the safety and restoration of her son.What was this grim thing of which they had accused her Joe? She could not yet get to the bottom of it, she could not understand how men could be so warped and blind. Why, Joe had told them how it happened, he had explained it as clear as well water, but they didn’t believe him. She went out and sat on the porch to think it out, if possible, and come to some way of helping Joe. There was not a friend to turn to, not a counselor to lean upon.She never had felt it lonely in the old place before, for there was companionship even in the memory of her dead, but this evening as she sat on the porch, the familiar objects in the yard growing dim through the oncoming night, the hollowness of desolation was there. Joe was in prison. The neighbors had refused to believe the word of her boy. There was nobody to help him but her. The hand of everybody else was against him. She had delivered him into bondage and brought this trouble to him, and now she must stir herself to set him free.“It’s all my own doin’s,” said she in unsparing reproach. “My chickens has come to roost.”After nightfall she went into the kitchen where she sat a dreary while before her stove, leaning forward in her unlovely, ruminating pose. Through the open draft of the stove the red coals within it glowed, casting three little bars of light upon the floor. Now and then a stick burned in two and settled down, showering sparks through the grate. These little flashes lit up her brown and somber face, and discovered the slow tears upon her weathered cheeks. For a long time she sat thus, then at last she lifted her head and looked around the room. Her table stood as she had left158it in the morning, no food had passed her lips since then. But the frantic turmoil of the first hours after Joe had been led away to jail had quieted.A plan of action had shaped itself in her mind. In the morning she would go to Shelbyville and seek her husband’s old friend, Colonel Henry Price, to solicit his advice and assistance. In a manner comforted by this resolution, she prepared herself a pot of coffee and some food. After the loneliest and most hopeless meal that she ever had eaten in her life, she went to bed.In the house of Isom Chase, where neighbors sat to watch the night out beside the shrouded body, there was a waste of oil in many lamps, such an illumination that it seemed a wonder that old Isom did not rise up from his gory bed to turn down the wicks and speak reproof. Everybody must have a light. If an errand for the living or a service for the dead called one from this room to that, there must be a light. That was a place of tragic mystery, a place of violence and death. If light had been lacking there on the deeds of Isom Chase, on his hoardings and hidings away; on the hour of his death and the mystery of it, then all this must be balanced tonight by gleams in every window, beams through every crevice; lamps here, lanterns there, candles in cupboards, cellar, and nook.Let there be light in the house of Isom Chase, and in the sharp espionage of curious eyes, for dark days hang over it, and the young widow who draws the pity of all because she cannot weep.No matter how hard a woman’s life with a man has been, when he dies she is expected to mourn. That was the standard of fealty and respect in the neighborhood of Isom Chase, as it is in more enlightened communities in other parts of the world. A woman should weep for her man, no matter what bruises on body his heavy hand may leave behind him, or159what scars in the heart which no storm of tears can wash away. Custom has made hypocrites of the ladies in this matter the wide world through. Let no man, therefore, lying bloodless and repellent upon his cooling-board, gather comfort to his cold heart when his widow’s tears fall upon his face. For she may be weeping more for what might have been than was.Isom Chase’s widow could not weep at all. That was what they said of her, and their pity was more tender, their compassion more sweet. Dry grief, they said. And that is grief like a covered fire, which smolders in the heart and chars the foundations of life. She ought to be crying, to clear her mind and purge herself of the dregs of sorrow, which would settle and corrode unless flushed out by tears; she ought to get rid of it at once, like any other widow, and settle down to the enjoyment of all the property.The women around Ollie in her room tried to provoke her tears by reference to Isom’s good qualities, his widely known honesty, his ceaseless striving to lay up property which he knew he couldn’t take with him, which he realized that his young wife would live long years after him to enjoy. They glozed his faults and made virtues out of his close-grained traits; they praised and lamented, with sighs and mournful words, but Isom’s widow could not weep.Ollie wished they would go away and let her sleep. She longed for them to put out the lamps and let the moonlight come in through the window and whiten on the floor, and bring her soft thoughts of Morgan. She chafed under their chatter, and despised them for their shallow pretense. There was not one of them who had respected Isom in life, but now they sat there, a solemn conclave, great-breasted sucklers of the sons of men, and insisted that she, his unloved, his driven, abused and belabored wife, weep tears for his going, for which, in her heart, she was glad.160It was well that they could not see her face, turned into the shadow, nestled against the pillow, moved now and then as by the zephyr breath of a smile. At times she wanted to laugh at their pretense and humbug. To prevent it breaking out in unseemly sound she was obliged to bite the coverlet and let the spasms of mirth waste themselves in her body and limbs.When the good women beheld these contractions they looked at each other meaningly and shook dolefully wise heads. Dry grief. Already it was laying deep hold on her, racking her like ague. She would waste under the curse of it, and follow Isom to the grave in a little while, if she could not soon be moved to weep.Ollie did not want to appear unneighborly nor unkind, but as the night wore heavily on she at last requested them to leave her.“You are all so good and kind!” said she, sincere for the moment, for there was no mistaking that they meant to be. “But I think if you’d take the lamp out of the room I could go to sleep. If I need you, I’ll call.”“Now, that’s just what you do, deary,” said red-faced Mrs. Greening, patting her head comfortingly.The women retired to the spare bedroom where Joe had slept the night before, and from there their low voices came to Ollie through the open door. She got up and closed it gently, and ran up the window-blind and opened the window-sash, letting in the wind, standing there a little while drawing her gown aside, for the touch of it on her hot breast. She remembered the day that Joe had seen her so, the churn-dasher in her hand; the recollection of what was pictured in his face provoked a smile.There was a mist before the moon like a blowing veil, presaging rain tomorrow, the day of the funeral. It was well known in that part of the country that rain on a coffin161a certain sign that another of that family would die within a year. Ollie hoped that it would not rain. She was not ready to die within a year, nor many years. Her desire to live was large and deep. She had won the right, Isom had compensated in part for the evil he had done her in leaving behind him all that was necessary to make the journey pleasant.As she turned into her bed again and composed herself for sleep, she thought of Joe, with a feeling of tenderness. She recalled again what Isom had proudly told her of the lad’s blood and breeding, and she understood dimly now that there was something extraordinary in Joe’s manner of shielding her to his own disgrace and hurt. A common man would not have done that, she knew.She wondered if Morgan would have done it, if he had been called upon, but the yea or the nay of it did not trouble her. Morgan was secure in her heart without sacrifice.Well, tomorrow they would bury Isom, and that would end it. Joe would be set free then, she thought, the future would be clear. So reasoning, she went to sleep in peace.Ollie’s habit of early rising during the past year of her busy life made it impossible for her to sleep after daylight. For a while after waking next morning she lay enjoying that new phase of her enfranchisement. From that day forward there would be no need of rising with the dawn. Time was her own now; she could stretch like a lady who has servants to bring and take away, until the sun came into her chamber, if she choose.Downstairs there were dim sounds of people moving about, and the odors of breakfast were rising. Thinking that it would be well, for the sake of appearances, to go down and assist them, she got up and dressed.She stopped before the glass to try her hair in a new arrangement, it was such bright hair, she thought, for mourning,162but yet as somber as her heart, bringing it a little lower on the brow, in a sweep from the point of parting. The effect was somewhat frivolous for a season of mourning, and she would have to pass through one, she sighed. After a while, when she went out into Morgan’s world of laughter and chatter and fine things. She smiled, patting her lively tresses back into their accustomed place.Ollie was vain of her prettiness, as any woman is, only in her case there was no soul beneath it to give it ballast. Her beauty was pretty much surface comeliness, and it was all there was of her, like a great singer who sometimes is nothing but a voice.Sol Greening was in the kitchen with his wife and his son’s wife and two of the more distant neighbor women who had remained overnight. The other men who had watched with Sol around Isom’s bier had gone off to dig a grave for the dead, after the neighborly custom there. As quick as her thought, Ollie’s eyes sought the spot where Isom’s blood had stood in the worn plank beside the table. The stain was gone. She drew her breath with freedom, seeing it so, yet wondering how they had done it, for she had heard all her life that the stain of human blood upon a floor could not be scoured away.“We was just gettin’ a bite of breakfast together,” said Mrs. Greening, her red face shining, and brighter for its big, friendly smile.“I was afraid you might not be able to find everything,” explained Ollie, “and so I came down.”“No need for you to do that, bless your heart!” Mrs. Greening said. “But we was just talkin’ of callin’ you. Sol, he run across something last night that we thought you might want to see as soon as you could.”Ollie looked from one to the other of them with a question in her eyes.163“Something–something of mine?” she asked.Mrs. Greening nodded.“Something Isom left. Fetch it to her, Sol.”Sol disappeared into the dread parlor where Isom lay, and came back with a large envelope tied about with a blue string, and sealed at the back with wax over the knotted cord.“It’s Isom’s will,” said Sol, giving it to Ollie. “When we was makin’ room to fetch in the coffin and lay Isom out in it last night, we had to move the center table, and the drawer fell out of it. This paper was in there along with a bundle of old tax receipts. As soon as we seen what was on it, we decided it orto be put in your hands as soon as you woke up.”“I didn’t know he had a will,” said Ollie, turning the envelope in her hands, not knowing what to make of it, or what to do with it, at all.“Read what’s on the in-vellup,” advised Sol, standing by importantly, his hands on his hips, his big legs spread out.Outside the sun was shining, tenderly yellow like a new plant. Ollie marked it with a lifting of relief. There would be no rain on the coffin. It was light enough to read the writing on the envelope where she stood, but she moved over to the window, wondering on the way.What was a will for but to leave property, and what need had Isom for making one?It was an old envelope, its edges browned by time, and the ink upon it was gray.My last Will and Testament.Isom Chase.N. B.–To be opened by John B. Little, in case he is living at the time of my death. If he is not, then this is to be filed by the finder, unopened, in the probate court.That was the superscription in Isom’s writing, correctly spelled, correctly punctuated, after his precise way in all business affairs.164“Who is John B. Little?” asked Ollie, her heart seeming to grow small, shrinking from some undefined dread.“He’s Judge Little, of the county court now,” said Sol. “I’ll go over after him, if you say so.”“After breakfast will do,” said Ollie.She put the envelope on the shelf beside the clock, as if it did not concern her greatly. Yet, under her placid surface she was deeply moved. What need had Isom for making a will?“It saves a lot of lawin’ and wastin’ money on costs,” said Sol, as if reading her mind and making answer to her thought. “You’ll have a right smart of property on your hands to look after for a young girl like you.”Of course, to her. Who else was there for him to will his property to? A right smart, indeed. Sol’s words were wise; they quieted her sudden, sharp pain of fear.Judge Little lived less than a mile away. Before nine o’clock he was there, his black coat down to his knees, for he was a short man and bowed of the legs, his long ends of hair combed over his bald crown.The judge was at that state of shrinkage when the veins can be counted in the hands of a thin man of his kind. His smoothly shaved face was purple from congestion, the bald place on his small head was red. He was a man who walked about as if wrapped in meditation, and on him rested a notarial air. His arms were almost as long as his legs, his hands were extremely large, lending the impression that they had belonged originally to another and larger man, and that Judge Little must have become possessed of them by some process of delinquency against a debtor. As he walked along his way those immense hands hovered near the skirts of his long coat, the fingers bent, as if to lay hold of that impressive garment and part it. This, together with the judge’s meditative appearance, lent him the aspect of always being on the point of sitting down.165“Well, well,” said he, sliding his spectacles down his nose to get the reading focus, advancing the sealed envelope, drawing it away again, “so Isom left a will? Not surprising, not surprising. Isom was a careful man, a man of business. I suppose we might as well proceed to open the document?”The judge was sitting with his thin legs crossed. They hung as close and limp as empty trousers. Around the room he roved his eyes, red, watery, plagued by dust and wind. Greening was there, and his wife. The daughter-in-law had gone home to get ready for the funeral. The other two neighbor women reposed easily on the kitchen chairs, arms tightly folded, backs against the wall.“You, Mrs. Chase, being the only living person who is likely to have an interest in the will as legatee, are fully aware of the circumstances under which it was found, and so forth and so forth?”Ollie nodded. There was something in her throat, dry and impeding. She felt that she could not speak.Judge Little took the envelope by the end, holding it up to the light. He took out his jack-knife and cut the cord.It was a thin paper that he drew forth, and with little writing on it. Soon Judge Little had made himself master of its contents, with anUm-m-m, as he started, and with anA-h-h! when he concluded, and a sucking-in of his thin cheeks.He looked around again, a new brightness in his eyes. But he said nothing. He merely handed the paper to Ollie.“Read it out loud,” she requested, giving it back.Judge Little fiddled with his glasses again. Then he adjusted the paper before his eyes like a target, and read:I hereby will and bequeath to my beloved son, Isom Walker Chase, all of my property, personal and real; and I hereby appoint my friend, John B. Little, administrator of my estate, to serve without bond, until my son shall attain his majority, in case that I should die before that time. This is my last will, and I am in sound mind and bodily health.That was all.

In the light of Joe’s reluctant testimony and his strange, stubborn, and stiff-necked refusal to go into the matter of the quarrel between himself and Isom; the unexplained mystery of the money which had been found in the burst bag on Isom’s breast; and Joe’s declaration that he had not seen it until Isom fell: in the light of all this, the people of that community believed the verdict of the coroner’s jury to be just.

This refusal of Joe’s to talk out and explain everything was a display of the threadbare Newbolt dignity, people said, an exhibition of which they had not seen since old Peter’s death. But it looked more like bull-headedness to them.

“Don’t the darned fool know he’s pokin’ his head under the gallus?” they asked.

What was the trouble between him and Isom about? What was he doin’ there in the kitchen with the lamp lit that hour of the night? Where did that there money come from, gentlemen? That’s what I want you to tellme!

Those were the questions which were being asked, man to man, group to group, and which nobody could answer, as they stood discussing it after Joe had been taken away to jail. The coroner mingled with them, giving them the weight of his experience.

“That Newbolt’s deeper than he looks on the outside, gentlemen,” he said, shaking his serious whiskers. “There’s a lot more behind this case than we can see. Old Isom Chase was murdered, and that murder was planned away ahead. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody on the witness-stand153as shrewd and sharp as that Newbolt boy. He knew just what to so say and just what to shut his jaws on. But we’ll fetch it out of him–or somebody else.”

As men went home to take up their neglected tasks, they talked it all over. They wondered what Joe would have done with that money if he had succeeded in getting away with it; whether he would have made it out of the country, or whether the invincible Bill Frost, keen on his scent as a fox-hound, would have pursued him and brought him back.

They wondered how high they built the gallows to hang a man, and discussed the probability of the event being public. They speculated on the manner in which Joe would go to his death, whether boldly, with his head up that way, or cringing and afraid, his proud heart and spirit broken, and whether he would confess at the end or carry his secret with him to the grave. Then they branched off into discussions of the pain of hanging, and wondered whether it was a “more horribler” death than drowning or burning in a haystack, or from eating pounded glass.

It was a great, moving, awakening sensation in the countryside, that taking off of Isom Chase by a mysterious midnight shot. It pulled people up out of the drowse of a generation, and set them talking as they had not talked in twenty years. Their sluggish brains were heated by it, their sleeping hearts quickened.

People were of the undivided opinion that Isom had caught Joe robbing him, and that Joe had shot him in the fear of punishment for the theft. Perhaps it is because chivalry is such a rare quality among the business activities of this life, that none of them believed he was shielding Isom’s wife, and that he was innocent of any wrong himself. They did not approve the attempt of the coroner to drag her into it. The shrewd insight of the little man cost him a good many votes that day.154

Joe Newbolt could very well be a robber, they said, for all his life had prepared him for a fall before the temptation of money. He could very well be a robber, indeed, and there was no room for him to turn out anything nobler, for wasn’t he the pore folks’ boy?

Ollie was almost as short in her realization of what Joe had done for her as those who knew nothing at all of his motive of silence. In the relief of her escape from public disclosure of her intrigue with Morgan, she enjoyed a luxurious relaxation. It was like sleep after long watching.

She did not understand the peril in which Joe stood on her account, nor consider that the future still held for both of them a trial which would test Joe’s strength as the corrosive tooth of acid challenges the purity of gold. It was enough for her that sunny afternoon, and sufficient to her shallow soul, to know that she was safe. She lay warm and restful in her bed while the neighbor women set the house to rights, and the men moved Isom’s body into the parlor to wait for the coffin which Sol Greening had gone after to the county-seat.

Ollie watched the little warm white clouds against the blue of the October sky, and thought of the fleecy soft things which a mother loves to swaddle her baby in; she watched the shadow of falling leaves upon the floor, blowing past her window on the slant sunbeams.

She was safe!

Joe was accused, but she seemed to hold that a trivial incident in an exciting day. It would pass; he would clear himself, as he deserved to be cleared, and then, when Morgan came back for her and carried her away into his world, everything would be in tune.

Perhaps it was because she knew that Joe was innocent that his accusation appeared so untenable and trivial to her. At any rate, the lawyers over at Shelbyville–wasn’t their155cunning known around the world–could get him off. If it came to that, she would see that he had a good one, as good as money could employ. Joe had stood by her; she would stand by Joe. That was the extent of her concern that afternoon.

It was pleasant to stretch there in peace, with no task before her, no rude summons to arise and work. Isom would call her no more at dawn; his voice would be silent in that house forever more. There was no regret in the thought, no pang, no pain.

As one lives his life, so he must be pitied in death. Soft deeds father soft memories. There never was but one man who rose with the recollection of pleasant dreams from pillowing his head upon a stone, and that man was under the hand of God. Isom Chase had planted bitterness; his memory was gall.

She was safe, and she was free. She had come into her expectations; the pre-nuptial dreams of enjoying Isom Chase’s wealth were suddenly at hand.

Together with the old rifle and Isom’s blood-stained garments, the coroner had taken away the little bag of gold, to be used as evidence, he said. He had taken the money, just as it was in the little sack, a smear of blood on it, after counting it before witnesses and giving her a receipt for the amount. Two thousand dollars; one hundred pieces of twenty dollars each. That was the tale of the contents of the canvas bag which had lain grinning on Isom’s pulseless heart. It was not a great amount of money, considering Isom’s faculty for gaining and holding it. It was the general belief that he had ten, twenty, times that amount, besides his loans, hidden away, and the secret of his hiding-place had gone out of the world with Isom.

Others said that he had put his money into lands, pointing to the many farms which he owned and rented in the county.156But be that as it might, there was Ollie, young and handsome, well paid for her hard year as Isom’s wife, free now, and doubtless already willing at heart to make some young man happy. Nobody blamed her for that.

It was well known that Isom had abused her, that her life had been cheerless and lonely under his roof. Those who did not know it from first-hand facts believed it on the general notoriety of the man. Contact with Isom Chase had been like sleeping on a corn-husk bed; there was no comfort in it, no matter which way one turned.

Ollie, her eyes closed languidly, now languidly opened to follow the track of the lamb-fleece clouds, her young body feeling warm and pleasant, as if lately released from a sorely cramped state; Ollie, with little fleeting dreams in her pretty, shallow head, was believed by the women of the neighborhood to be in the way of realizing on Isom’s expectations of an heir. It was a little fiction that had taken its beginning from Sol Greening’s early talk, and owing to that rumor the coroner had been gentle with her beyond the inclination of his heart.

The young widow smiled as she lay on her pillow and thought of the little intimate touches of tenderness which this baseless rumor had made her the beneficiary of at her neighbor’s hands. She was selfish enough to take advantage of their mistaken kindnesses and to surrender to their vigorous elbows the work below stairs. That was her day of freedom; it was her dawn of peace.

It was pleasant to have come through stress and hardship to this restful eddy in the storm of life; to have faced peril and disgrace and come away still clean in the eyes of men. Ollie was content with things as they were, as the evening shadows closed the door upon the events of that trying day.

Quite different was the case of Sarah Newbolt, once more back in her poor shelter, nested in bramble and clambering157vine. She was dazed, the song was gone out of her heart. She was bereaved, and her lips were moving in endless repetition of supplication to the Almighty for the safety and restoration of her son.

What was this grim thing of which they had accused her Joe? She could not yet get to the bottom of it, she could not understand how men could be so warped and blind. Why, Joe had told them how it happened, he had explained it as clear as well water, but they didn’t believe him. She went out and sat on the porch to think it out, if possible, and come to some way of helping Joe. There was not a friend to turn to, not a counselor to lean upon.

She never had felt it lonely in the old place before, for there was companionship even in the memory of her dead, but this evening as she sat on the porch, the familiar objects in the yard growing dim through the oncoming night, the hollowness of desolation was there. Joe was in prison. The neighbors had refused to believe the word of her boy. There was nobody to help him but her. The hand of everybody else was against him. She had delivered him into bondage and brought this trouble to him, and now she must stir herself to set him free.

“It’s all my own doin’s,” said she in unsparing reproach. “My chickens has come to roost.”

After nightfall she went into the kitchen where she sat a dreary while before her stove, leaning forward in her unlovely, ruminating pose. Through the open draft of the stove the red coals within it glowed, casting three little bars of light upon the floor. Now and then a stick burned in two and settled down, showering sparks through the grate. These little flashes lit up her brown and somber face, and discovered the slow tears upon her weathered cheeks. For a long time she sat thus, then at last she lifted her head and looked around the room. Her table stood as she had left158it in the morning, no food had passed her lips since then. But the frantic turmoil of the first hours after Joe had been led away to jail had quieted.

A plan of action had shaped itself in her mind. In the morning she would go to Shelbyville and seek her husband’s old friend, Colonel Henry Price, to solicit his advice and assistance. In a manner comforted by this resolution, she prepared herself a pot of coffee and some food. After the loneliest and most hopeless meal that she ever had eaten in her life, she went to bed.

In the house of Isom Chase, where neighbors sat to watch the night out beside the shrouded body, there was a waste of oil in many lamps, such an illumination that it seemed a wonder that old Isom did not rise up from his gory bed to turn down the wicks and speak reproof. Everybody must have a light. If an errand for the living or a service for the dead called one from this room to that, there must be a light. That was a place of tragic mystery, a place of violence and death. If light had been lacking there on the deeds of Isom Chase, on his hoardings and hidings away; on the hour of his death and the mystery of it, then all this must be balanced tonight by gleams in every window, beams through every crevice; lamps here, lanterns there, candles in cupboards, cellar, and nook.

Let there be light in the house of Isom Chase, and in the sharp espionage of curious eyes, for dark days hang over it, and the young widow who draws the pity of all because she cannot weep.

No matter how hard a woman’s life with a man has been, when he dies she is expected to mourn. That was the standard of fealty and respect in the neighborhood of Isom Chase, as it is in more enlightened communities in other parts of the world. A woman should weep for her man, no matter what bruises on body his heavy hand may leave behind him, or159what scars in the heart which no storm of tears can wash away. Custom has made hypocrites of the ladies in this matter the wide world through. Let no man, therefore, lying bloodless and repellent upon his cooling-board, gather comfort to his cold heart when his widow’s tears fall upon his face. For she may be weeping more for what might have been than was.

Isom Chase’s widow could not weep at all. That was what they said of her, and their pity was more tender, their compassion more sweet. Dry grief, they said. And that is grief like a covered fire, which smolders in the heart and chars the foundations of life. She ought to be crying, to clear her mind and purge herself of the dregs of sorrow, which would settle and corrode unless flushed out by tears; she ought to get rid of it at once, like any other widow, and settle down to the enjoyment of all the property.

The women around Ollie in her room tried to provoke her tears by reference to Isom’s good qualities, his widely known honesty, his ceaseless striving to lay up property which he knew he couldn’t take with him, which he realized that his young wife would live long years after him to enjoy. They glozed his faults and made virtues out of his close-grained traits; they praised and lamented, with sighs and mournful words, but Isom’s widow could not weep.

Ollie wished they would go away and let her sleep. She longed for them to put out the lamps and let the moonlight come in through the window and whiten on the floor, and bring her soft thoughts of Morgan. She chafed under their chatter, and despised them for their shallow pretense. There was not one of them who had respected Isom in life, but now they sat there, a solemn conclave, great-breasted sucklers of the sons of men, and insisted that she, his unloved, his driven, abused and belabored wife, weep tears for his going, for which, in her heart, she was glad.160

It was well that they could not see her face, turned into the shadow, nestled against the pillow, moved now and then as by the zephyr breath of a smile. At times she wanted to laugh at their pretense and humbug. To prevent it breaking out in unseemly sound she was obliged to bite the coverlet and let the spasms of mirth waste themselves in her body and limbs.

When the good women beheld these contractions they looked at each other meaningly and shook dolefully wise heads. Dry grief. Already it was laying deep hold on her, racking her like ague. She would waste under the curse of it, and follow Isom to the grave in a little while, if she could not soon be moved to weep.

Ollie did not want to appear unneighborly nor unkind, but as the night wore heavily on she at last requested them to leave her.

“You are all so good and kind!” said she, sincere for the moment, for there was no mistaking that they meant to be. “But I think if you’d take the lamp out of the room I could go to sleep. If I need you, I’ll call.”

“Now, that’s just what you do, deary,” said red-faced Mrs. Greening, patting her head comfortingly.

The women retired to the spare bedroom where Joe had slept the night before, and from there their low voices came to Ollie through the open door. She got up and closed it gently, and ran up the window-blind and opened the window-sash, letting in the wind, standing there a little while drawing her gown aside, for the touch of it on her hot breast. She remembered the day that Joe had seen her so, the churn-dasher in her hand; the recollection of what was pictured in his face provoked a smile.

There was a mist before the moon like a blowing veil, presaging rain tomorrow, the day of the funeral. It was well known in that part of the country that rain on a coffin161a certain sign that another of that family would die within a year. Ollie hoped that it would not rain. She was not ready to die within a year, nor many years. Her desire to live was large and deep. She had won the right, Isom had compensated in part for the evil he had done her in leaving behind him all that was necessary to make the journey pleasant.

As she turned into her bed again and composed herself for sleep, she thought of Joe, with a feeling of tenderness. She recalled again what Isom had proudly told her of the lad’s blood and breeding, and she understood dimly now that there was something extraordinary in Joe’s manner of shielding her to his own disgrace and hurt. A common man would not have done that, she knew.

She wondered if Morgan would have done it, if he had been called upon, but the yea or the nay of it did not trouble her. Morgan was secure in her heart without sacrifice.

Well, tomorrow they would bury Isom, and that would end it. Joe would be set free then, she thought, the future would be clear. So reasoning, she went to sleep in peace.

Ollie’s habit of early rising during the past year of her busy life made it impossible for her to sleep after daylight. For a while after waking next morning she lay enjoying that new phase of her enfranchisement. From that day forward there would be no need of rising with the dawn. Time was her own now; she could stretch like a lady who has servants to bring and take away, until the sun came into her chamber, if she choose.

Downstairs there were dim sounds of people moving about, and the odors of breakfast were rising. Thinking that it would be well, for the sake of appearances, to go down and assist them, she got up and dressed.

She stopped before the glass to try her hair in a new arrangement, it was such bright hair, she thought, for mourning,162but yet as somber as her heart, bringing it a little lower on the brow, in a sweep from the point of parting. The effect was somewhat frivolous for a season of mourning, and she would have to pass through one, she sighed. After a while, when she went out into Morgan’s world of laughter and chatter and fine things. She smiled, patting her lively tresses back into their accustomed place.

Ollie was vain of her prettiness, as any woman is, only in her case there was no soul beneath it to give it ballast. Her beauty was pretty much surface comeliness, and it was all there was of her, like a great singer who sometimes is nothing but a voice.

Sol Greening was in the kitchen with his wife and his son’s wife and two of the more distant neighbor women who had remained overnight. The other men who had watched with Sol around Isom’s bier had gone off to dig a grave for the dead, after the neighborly custom there. As quick as her thought, Ollie’s eyes sought the spot where Isom’s blood had stood in the worn plank beside the table. The stain was gone. She drew her breath with freedom, seeing it so, yet wondering how they had done it, for she had heard all her life that the stain of human blood upon a floor could not be scoured away.

“We was just gettin’ a bite of breakfast together,” said Mrs. Greening, her red face shining, and brighter for its big, friendly smile.

“I was afraid you might not be able to find everything,” explained Ollie, “and so I came down.”

“No need for you to do that, bless your heart!” Mrs. Greening said. “But we was just talkin’ of callin’ you. Sol, he run across something last night that we thought you might want to see as soon as you could.”

Ollie looked from one to the other of them with a question in her eyes.163

“Something–something of mine?” she asked.

Mrs. Greening nodded.

“Something Isom left. Fetch it to her, Sol.”

Sol disappeared into the dread parlor where Isom lay, and came back with a large envelope tied about with a blue string, and sealed at the back with wax over the knotted cord.

“It’s Isom’s will,” said Sol, giving it to Ollie. “When we was makin’ room to fetch in the coffin and lay Isom out in it last night, we had to move the center table, and the drawer fell out of it. This paper was in there along with a bundle of old tax receipts. As soon as we seen what was on it, we decided it orto be put in your hands as soon as you woke up.”

“I didn’t know he had a will,” said Ollie, turning the envelope in her hands, not knowing what to make of it, or what to do with it, at all.

“Read what’s on the in-vellup,” advised Sol, standing by importantly, his hands on his hips, his big legs spread out.

Outside the sun was shining, tenderly yellow like a new plant. Ollie marked it with a lifting of relief. There would be no rain on the coffin. It was light enough to read the writing on the envelope where she stood, but she moved over to the window, wondering on the way.

What was a will for but to leave property, and what need had Isom for making one?

It was an old envelope, its edges browned by time, and the ink upon it was gray.

My last Will and Testament.Isom Chase.

N. B.–To be opened by John B. Little, in case he is living at the time of my death. If he is not, then this is to be filed by the finder, unopened, in the probate court.

That was the superscription in Isom’s writing, correctly spelled, correctly punctuated, after his precise way in all business affairs.164

“Who is John B. Little?” asked Ollie, her heart seeming to grow small, shrinking from some undefined dread.

“He’s Judge Little, of the county court now,” said Sol. “I’ll go over after him, if you say so.”

“After breakfast will do,” said Ollie.

She put the envelope on the shelf beside the clock, as if it did not concern her greatly. Yet, under her placid surface she was deeply moved. What need had Isom for making a will?

“It saves a lot of lawin’ and wastin’ money on costs,” said Sol, as if reading her mind and making answer to her thought. “You’ll have a right smart of property on your hands to look after for a young girl like you.”

Of course, to her. Who else was there for him to will his property to? A right smart, indeed. Sol’s words were wise; they quieted her sudden, sharp pain of fear.

Judge Little lived less than a mile away. Before nine o’clock he was there, his black coat down to his knees, for he was a short man and bowed of the legs, his long ends of hair combed over his bald crown.

The judge was at that state of shrinkage when the veins can be counted in the hands of a thin man of his kind. His smoothly shaved face was purple from congestion, the bald place on his small head was red. He was a man who walked about as if wrapped in meditation, and on him rested a notarial air. His arms were almost as long as his legs, his hands were extremely large, lending the impression that they had belonged originally to another and larger man, and that Judge Little must have become possessed of them by some process of delinquency against a debtor. As he walked along his way those immense hands hovered near the skirts of his long coat, the fingers bent, as if to lay hold of that impressive garment and part it. This, together with the judge’s meditative appearance, lent him the aspect of always being on the point of sitting down.165

“Well, well,” said he, sliding his spectacles down his nose to get the reading focus, advancing the sealed envelope, drawing it away again, “so Isom left a will? Not surprising, not surprising. Isom was a careful man, a man of business. I suppose we might as well proceed to open the document?”

The judge was sitting with his thin legs crossed. They hung as close and limp as empty trousers. Around the room he roved his eyes, red, watery, plagued by dust and wind. Greening was there, and his wife. The daughter-in-law had gone home to get ready for the funeral. The other two neighbor women reposed easily on the kitchen chairs, arms tightly folded, backs against the wall.

“You, Mrs. Chase, being the only living person who is likely to have an interest in the will as legatee, are fully aware of the circumstances under which it was found, and so forth and so forth?”

Ollie nodded. There was something in her throat, dry and impeding. She felt that she could not speak.

Judge Little took the envelope by the end, holding it up to the light. He took out his jack-knife and cut the cord.

It was a thin paper that he drew forth, and with little writing on it. Soon Judge Little had made himself master of its contents, with anUm-m-m, as he started, and with anA-h-h! when he concluded, and a sucking-in of his thin cheeks.

He looked around again, a new brightness in his eyes. But he said nothing. He merely handed the paper to Ollie.

“Read it out loud,” she requested, giving it back.

Judge Little fiddled with his glasses again. Then he adjusted the paper before his eyes like a target, and read:

I hereby will and bequeath to my beloved son, Isom Walker Chase, all of my property, personal and real; and I hereby appoint my friend, John B. Little, administrator of my estate, to serve without bond, until my son shall attain his majority, in case that I should die before that time. This is my last will, and I am in sound mind and bodily health.

That was all.

166CHAPTER XLET HIM HANG

The will was duly signed and witnessed, and bore a notarial seal. It was dated in the hand of the testator, in addition to the acknowledgment of the notary, all regular, and unquestionably done.“His son!” said Sol, amazed, looking around with big eyes. “Why, Isom he never had no son!”“Do we know that?” asked Judge Little, as if to raise the question of reasonable doubt.Son or no son, until that point should be determined he would have the administration of the estate, with large and comfortable fees.“Well, I’ve lived right there acrost the road from him all my life, and all of his, too; and I reckon I’d purty near know if anybody knowed!” declared Sol. “I went to school with Isom, I was one of the little fellers when he was a big one, and I was at his weddin’. My wife she laid out his first wife, and I dug her grave. She never had no children, judge; you know that as well as anybody.”Judge Little coughed dryly, thoughtfully, his customary aspect of deep meditation more impressive than ever.“Sometimes the people we believe we know best turn out to be the ones we know least,” said he. “Maybe we knew only one side of Isom’s life. Every man has his secrets.”“You mean to say there was another woman somewheres?” asked Sol, taking the scent avidly.The women against the wall joined Mrs. Greening in a virtuous, scandalized groan. They looked pityingly at Ollie, sitting straight and white in her chair. She did not appear167to see them; she was looking at Judge Little with fixed, frightened stare.“That is not for me to say,” answered the judge; and his manner of saying it seemed to convey the hint that hecouldthrow light on Isom’s past if he should unseal his lips.Ollie took it to be that way. She recalled the words of the will, “My friend, John B. Little.” Isom had never spoken in her hearing that way of any man. Perhaps there was some bond between the two men, reaching back to the escapades of youth, and maybe Judge Little had the rusty old key to some past romance in Isom’s life.“Laws of mercy!” said Mrs. Greening, freeing a sigh of indignation which surely must have burst her if it had been repressed.“This document is dated almost thirty years ago,” said the judge. “It is possible that Isom left a later will. We must make a search of the premises to determine that.”“In sixty-seven he wrote it,” said Sol, “and that was the year he was married. The certificate’s hangin’ in there on the wall. Before that, Isom he went off to St. Louis to business college a year or two and got all of his learnin’ and smart ways. I might ’a’ went, too, just as well as not. Always wisht I had.”“Very true, very true,” nodded Judge Little, as if to say: “You’re on the trail of his iniquities now, Sol.”Sol’s mouth gaped like an old-fashioned corn-planter as he looked from the judge to Mrs. Greening, from Mrs. Greening to Ollie. Sol believed the true light of the situation had reached his brain.“Walker–Isom Walker Chase! No Walkers around in this part of the country to name a boy after–never was.”“His mother was a Walker, from Ellinoi, dunce!” corrected his wife.“Oh!” said Sol, his scandalous case collapsing about168him as quickly as it had puffed up. “I forgot about her.”“Don’t you worry about that will, honey,” advised Mrs. Greening, going to Ollie and putting her large freckled arm around the young woman’s shoulders; “for it won’t amount to shucks! Isom never had a son, and even if he did by some woman he wasn’t married to, how’s he goin’ to prove he’s the feller?”Nobody attempted to answer her, and Mrs. Greening accepted that as proof that her argument was indubitable.“It–can’t–be–true!” said Ollie.“Well, it gits the best of me!” sighed Greening, shaking his uncombed head. “Isom he was too much of a business man to go and try to play off a joke like that on anybody.”“After the funeral I would advise a thorough search among Isom’s papers in the chance of finding another and later will than this,” said Judge Little. “And in the meantime, as a legal precaution, merely as a legal precaution and formality, Mrs. Chase––”The judge stopped, looking at Ollie from beneath the rims of his specs, as if waiting for her permission to proceed. Ollie, understanding nothing at all of what was in his mind, but feeling that it was required of her, nodded. That seemed the signal for which he waited. He proceeded:“As a legal formality, Mrs. Chase, I will proceed to file this document for probate this afternoon.”Judge Little put it in his pocket, reaching down into that deep depository until his long arm was engulfed to the elbow. That pocket must have run down to the hem of his garment, like the oil on Aaron’s beard.Ollie got up. Mrs. Greening hastened to her to offer the support of her motherly arm.“I think I’ll go upstairs,” said the young widow.“Yes, you do,” counseled Mrs. Greening. “They’ll be along with the wagons purty soon, and we’ll have to git169ready to go. I think they must have the grave done by now.”The women watched Ollie as she went uncertainly to the stairs and faltered as she climbed upward, shaking their heads forebodingly. Sol and Judge Little went outside together and stood talking by the door.“Ain’t it terrible!” said one woman.“Scan’lous!” agreed the other.Mrs. Greening shook her fist toward the parlor.“Old sneaky, slinkin’, miserly Isom!” she denounced. “I always felt that he was the kind of a man to do a trick like that. Shootin’ was too good for him–he orto been hung!”In her room upstairs Ollie, while entirely unaware of Mrs. Greening’s vehement arraignment of Isom, bitterly indorsed it in her heart. She sat on her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. An hour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future was secure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper which prying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent her head upon her hand; tears trickled between her fingers.Perhaps Isom had a son, unknown to anybody there. There was that period out of his life when he was at business college in St. Louis. No one knew what had taken place in that time. Perhaps he had a son. If so, they would oust her, turn her out as poor as she came, with the memory of that hard year of servitude in her heart and nothing to compensate for it, not even a tender recollection. How much better if Joe had not come between her and Curtis Morgan that night–what night, how long ago was it now?–how much kinder and happier for her indeed?With the thought of what Joe had caused of wreckage in her life by his meddling, her resentment rose against him. But for him, slow-mouthed, cold-hearted lout, she would have been safe and happy with Morgan that hour. Old Isom170would have been living still, going about his sordid ways as before she came, and the need of his money would have been removed out of her life forever.Joe was at the bottom of all this–spying, prying, meddling Joe. Let him suffer for it now, said she. If he had kept out of things which he did not understand, the fool! Now let him suffer! Let him hang, if he must hang, as she had heard the women say last night he should. No act of hers, no word––“The wagons is coming, honey,” said Mrs. Greening at her door. “We must git ready to go to the graveyard now.”

The will was duly signed and witnessed, and bore a notarial seal. It was dated in the hand of the testator, in addition to the acknowledgment of the notary, all regular, and unquestionably done.

“His son!” said Sol, amazed, looking around with big eyes. “Why, Isom he never had no son!”

“Do we know that?” asked Judge Little, as if to raise the question of reasonable doubt.

Son or no son, until that point should be determined he would have the administration of the estate, with large and comfortable fees.

“Well, I’ve lived right there acrost the road from him all my life, and all of his, too; and I reckon I’d purty near know if anybody knowed!” declared Sol. “I went to school with Isom, I was one of the little fellers when he was a big one, and I was at his weddin’. My wife she laid out his first wife, and I dug her grave. She never had no children, judge; you know that as well as anybody.”

Judge Little coughed dryly, thoughtfully, his customary aspect of deep meditation more impressive than ever.

“Sometimes the people we believe we know best turn out to be the ones we know least,” said he. “Maybe we knew only one side of Isom’s life. Every man has his secrets.”

“You mean to say there was another woman somewheres?” asked Sol, taking the scent avidly.

The women against the wall joined Mrs. Greening in a virtuous, scandalized groan. They looked pityingly at Ollie, sitting straight and white in her chair. She did not appear167to see them; she was looking at Judge Little with fixed, frightened stare.

“That is not for me to say,” answered the judge; and his manner of saying it seemed to convey the hint that hecouldthrow light on Isom’s past if he should unseal his lips.

Ollie took it to be that way. She recalled the words of the will, “My friend, John B. Little.” Isom had never spoken in her hearing that way of any man. Perhaps there was some bond between the two men, reaching back to the escapades of youth, and maybe Judge Little had the rusty old key to some past romance in Isom’s life.

“Laws of mercy!” said Mrs. Greening, freeing a sigh of indignation which surely must have burst her if it had been repressed.

“This document is dated almost thirty years ago,” said the judge. “It is possible that Isom left a later will. We must make a search of the premises to determine that.”

“In sixty-seven he wrote it,” said Sol, “and that was the year he was married. The certificate’s hangin’ in there on the wall. Before that, Isom he went off to St. Louis to business college a year or two and got all of his learnin’ and smart ways. I might ’a’ went, too, just as well as not. Always wisht I had.”

“Very true, very true,” nodded Judge Little, as if to say: “You’re on the trail of his iniquities now, Sol.”

Sol’s mouth gaped like an old-fashioned corn-planter as he looked from the judge to Mrs. Greening, from Mrs. Greening to Ollie. Sol believed the true light of the situation had reached his brain.

“Walker–Isom Walker Chase! No Walkers around in this part of the country to name a boy after–never was.”

“His mother was a Walker, from Ellinoi, dunce!” corrected his wife.

“Oh!” said Sol, his scandalous case collapsing about168him as quickly as it had puffed up. “I forgot about her.”

“Don’t you worry about that will, honey,” advised Mrs. Greening, going to Ollie and putting her large freckled arm around the young woman’s shoulders; “for it won’t amount to shucks! Isom never had a son, and even if he did by some woman he wasn’t married to, how’s he goin’ to prove he’s the feller?”

Nobody attempted to answer her, and Mrs. Greening accepted that as proof that her argument was indubitable.

“It–can’t–be–true!” said Ollie.

“Well, it gits the best of me!” sighed Greening, shaking his uncombed head. “Isom he was too much of a business man to go and try to play off a joke like that on anybody.”

“After the funeral I would advise a thorough search among Isom’s papers in the chance of finding another and later will than this,” said Judge Little. “And in the meantime, as a legal precaution, merely as a legal precaution and formality, Mrs. Chase––”

The judge stopped, looking at Ollie from beneath the rims of his specs, as if waiting for her permission to proceed. Ollie, understanding nothing at all of what was in his mind, but feeling that it was required of her, nodded. That seemed the signal for which he waited. He proceeded:

“As a legal formality, Mrs. Chase, I will proceed to file this document for probate this afternoon.”

Judge Little put it in his pocket, reaching down into that deep depository until his long arm was engulfed to the elbow. That pocket must have run down to the hem of his garment, like the oil on Aaron’s beard.

Ollie got up. Mrs. Greening hastened to her to offer the support of her motherly arm.

“I think I’ll go upstairs,” said the young widow.

“Yes, you do,” counseled Mrs. Greening. “They’ll be along with the wagons purty soon, and we’ll have to git169ready to go. I think they must have the grave done by now.”

The women watched Ollie as she went uncertainly to the stairs and faltered as she climbed upward, shaking their heads forebodingly. Sol and Judge Little went outside together and stood talking by the door.

“Ain’t it terrible!” said one woman.

“Scan’lous!” agreed the other.

Mrs. Greening shook her fist toward the parlor.

“Old sneaky, slinkin’, miserly Isom!” she denounced. “I always felt that he was the kind of a man to do a trick like that. Shootin’ was too good for him–he orto been hung!”

In her room upstairs Ollie, while entirely unaware of Mrs. Greening’s vehement arraignment of Isom, bitterly indorsed it in her heart. She sat on her tossed bed, the sickness of disappointment heavy over her. An hour ago wealth was in her hand, ease was before her, and the future was secure. Now all was torn down and scattered by an old yellow paper which prying, curious, meddlesome old Sol Greening had found. She bent her head upon her hand; tears trickled between her fingers.

Perhaps Isom had a son, unknown to anybody there. There was that period out of his life when he was at business college in St. Louis. No one knew what had taken place in that time. Perhaps he had a son. If so, they would oust her, turn her out as poor as she came, with the memory of that hard year of servitude in her heart and nothing to compensate for it, not even a tender recollection. How much better if Joe had not come between her and Curtis Morgan that night–what night, how long ago was it now?–how much kinder and happier for her indeed?

With the thought of what Joe had caused of wreckage in her life by his meddling, her resentment rose against him. But for him, slow-mouthed, cold-hearted lout, she would have been safe and happy with Morgan that hour. Old Isom170would have been living still, going about his sordid ways as before she came, and the need of his money would have been removed out of her life forever.

Joe was at the bottom of all this–spying, prying, meddling Joe. Let him suffer for it now, said she. If he had kept out of things which he did not understand, the fool! Now let him suffer! Let him hang, if he must hang, as she had heard the women say last night he should. No act of hers, no word––

“The wagons is coming, honey,” said Mrs. Greening at her door. “We must git ready to go to the graveyard now.”

171CHAPTER XIPETER’S SON

Mint grew under the peach-trees in Colonel Henry Price’s garden, purple-stemmed mint, with dark-green, tender leaves. It was not the equal of the mint, so the colonel contended with provincial loyalty, which grew back in Kentucky along the clear, cool mountain streams. But, picked early in the morning with the dew on it, and then placed bouquet-wise in a bowl of fresh well-water, to stand thus until needed, it made a very competent substitute for the Kentucky herb.In that cool autumn weather mint was at its best, and Colonel Price lamented, as he gathered it that morning, elbow-deep in its dewy fragrance, that the need of it was passing with the last blaze of October days.Yet it was comforting to consider how well-balanced the seasons and men’s appetites were. With the passing of the season for mint, the desire for it left the palate. Frosty mornings called for the comfort of hot toddy, wintry blasts for frothing egg-nog in the cup. Man thirsted and nature satisfied; the economy of the world was thus balanced and all was well. So reasoned Colonel Price comfortably, after his way.Colonel Price straightened up from his mint-picking with dew on his arm and a flush of gathered blood in his cheeks above his beard. He looked the philosopher and humanitarian that he was that morning, his breast-length white beard blowing, his long and thick white hair brushed back in a rising wave from his broad forehead. He was a tall and spare man, slender of hand, small of foot, with the crinkles of past172laughter about his eyes, and in his face benevolence. One would have named him a poet at first look, and argued for the contention on further acquaintance.But Colonel Price was not a poet, except at heart, any more than he was a soldier, save in name. He never had trod the bloody fields of war, but had won his dignified and honorable title in the quiet ways of peace. Colonel Price was nothing less than an artist, who painted many things because they brought him money, and one thing because he loved it and could do it well.He painted prize-winning heifers and horses; portraits from the faces of men as nature had made them, with more or less fidelity, and from faded photographs and treasured daguerreotypes of days before and during the war, with whatever embellishments their owners required. He painted plates of apples which had taken prizes at the county fair, and royal pumpkins and kingly swine which had won like high distinctions. But the one thing he painted because he loved it, and could do it better than anybody else, was corn.At corn Colonel Price stood alone. He painted it in bunches hanging on barn doors, and in disordered heaps in the husk, a gleam of the grain showing here and there; and he painted it shelled from the cob. No matter where or how he painted it, his corn always was ripe and seasoned, like himself, and always so true to nature, color, form, crinkle, wrinkle, and guttered heart, that farmers stood before it marveling.Colonel Price’s heifers might be–very frequently they were–hulky and bumpy and out of proportion, his horses strangely foreshortened and hindlengthened; but there never was any fault to be found with his corn. Corn absolved him of all his sins against animate and inanimate things which had stood before his brush in his long life; corn173apotheosized him, corn lifted him to the throne and put the laurel upon his old white locks.The colonel had lived in Shelbyville for more than thirty years, in the same stately house with its three Ionic pillars reaching from ground to gable, supporting the two balconies facing toward the east. A square away on one hand was the court-house, a square away on the other the Presbyterian church; and around him were the homes of men whom he had seen come there young, and ripen with him in that quiet place. Above him on the hill stood the famous old college, its maples and elms around it, and coming down from it on each side of the broad street which led to its classic door.Colonel Price turned his thoughts from mint to men as he came across the dewy lawn, his gleanings in his hand, his bare head gleaming in the morning sun. He had heard, the evening before, of the arrest of Peter Newbolt’s boy for the murder of Isom Chase, and the news of it had come to him with a disturbing shock, almost as poignant as if one of his own blood had been accused.The colonel knew the sad story of Peter marrying below his estate away back there in Kentucky long ago. The Newbolts were blue-grass people, entitled to mate with the best in the land. Peter had debased his blood by marrying a mountain girl. Colonel Price had held it always to Peter’s credit that he had been ashamed of hismésalliance, and had plunged away into the woods of Missouri with his bride to hide her from the eyes of his aristocratic family and friends.Back in Kentucky the colonel’s family and the Newbolt’s had been neighbors. A few years after Peter made his dash across the Mississippi with his bride, and the journey on horseback to his new home, young Price had followed, drawn to Shelbyville by the fame of that place at a seat of culture and knowledge, which even in that early day had spread afar. The colonel–not having won his title then–came across174the river with his easel under one arm and his pride under the other. He had kept both of them in honor all those years.On the hopes and ambitions of those early days the colonel had realized, in a small way, something in the measure of a man who sets to work with the intention of making a million and finds himself content at last to count his gains by hundreds. He had taken up politics as a spice to the placid life of art, and once had represented his district in the state assembly, and four times had been elected county clerk. Then he had retired on his honors, with a competence from his early investments and an undivided ambition to paint corn.Through all those years he had watched the struggles of Peter Newbolt, who never seemed able to kick a foothold in the steps of success, and he had seen him die at last, with his unrealized schemes of life around him. And now Peter’s boy was in jail, charged with slaying old Isom Chase. Death had its compensations, at the worst, reflected the colonel. It had spared Peter this crowning disgrace.That boy must be a throw-back, thought the colonel, to the ambuscading, feud-fighting men on his mother’s side. The Newbolts never had been accused of crime back in Kentucky. There they had been the legislators, the judges, the governors, and senators. Yes, thought the colonel, coming around the corner of the house, lifting the fragrant bunch of mint to his face and pausing a step while he drank its breath; yes, the boy must be a throw-back. It wasn’t in the Newbolt blood to do a thing like that.The colonel heard the front gate close sharply, drawn to by the stone weight which he had arranged for that purpose, having in mind the guarding of his mint-bed from the incursions of dogs. He wondered who could be coming in so early, and hastened forward to see. A woman was coming up the walk toward the house.175She was tall, and soberly clad, and wore a little shawl over her head, which she held at her chin with one hand. The other hand she extended toward the colonel with a gesture of self-depreciation and appeal as she hurried forward in long strides.“Colonel Price, Colonel Price, sir! Can I speak to you a minute?” she asked, her voice halting from the shortness of breath.“Certainly, ma’am; I am at your command,” said the colonel.“Colonel, you don’t know me,” said she, a little inflection of disappointment in her tone.She stood before him, and the little shawl over her hair fell back to her shoulders. Her clothing was poor, her feet were covered with dust. She cast her hand out again in that little movement of appeal.“Mrs. Newbolt, Peter Newbolt’s widow, upon my soul!” exclaimed the colonel, shocked by his own slow recognition. “I beg your pardon, madam. I didn’t know you at first, it has been so long since I saw you. But I was thinking of you only the minute past.”“Oh, I’m in such trouble, Colonel Price!” said she.Colonel Price took her by the arm with tender friendliness.“Come in and rest and refresh yourself,” said he. “You surely didn’t walk over here?”“Yes, it’s only a step,” said she.“Five or six miles, I should say,” ventured the colonel.“Oh, no, only four. Have you heard about my boy Joe?”The colonel admitted that he had heard of his arrest.“I’ve come over to ask your advice on what to do,” said she, “and I hope it won’t bother you much, Colonel Price. Joe and me we haven’t got a friend in this world!”“I will consider it a duty and a pleasure to assist the boy176in any way I can,” said the colonel in perfunctory form. “But first come in, have some breakfast, and then we’ll talk it over. I’ll have to apologize for Miss Price. I’m afraid she’s abed yet,” said he, opening the door, showing his visitor into the parlor.“I’m awful early,” said Mrs. Newbolt hesitating at the door. “It’s shameful to come around disturbin’ folks at this hour. But when a body’s in trouble, Colonel Price, time seems long.”“It’s the same with all of us,” said he. “But Miss Price will be down presently. I think I hear her now. Just step in, ma’am.”She looked deprecatingly at her dusty shoes, standing there in the parlor door, her skirts gathered back from them.“If I could wipe some of this dust off,” said she.“Never mind that; we are all made of it,” the colonel said. “I’ll have the woman set you out some breakfast; afterward we’ll talk about the boy.”“I thank you kindly, Colonel Price, but I already et, long ago, what little I had stomach for,” said she.“Then if you will excuse me for a moment, madam?” begged the colonel, seeing her seated stiffly in an upholstered chair.She half rose in acknowledgment of his bow, awkward and embarrassed.“You’re excusable, sir,” said she.The colonel dashed away down the hall. She was only a mountain woman, certainly, but she was a lady by virtue of having been a gentleman’s wife. And she had caught him without a coat!Mrs. Newbolt sat stiffly in the parlor in surroundings which were of the first magnitude of grandeur to her, with corn pictures adorning the walls along with some of the colonel’s early transgressions in landscapes, and the portraits of177colonels in the family line who had gone before. That was the kind of fixings Joe would like, thought she, nodding her serious head; just the kind of things that Joe would enjoy and understand, like a gentleman born to it.“Well, he comes by it honest,” said she aloud.Colonel Price did not keep her waiting long. He came back in a black coat that was quite as grand as Judge Little’s, and almost as long. That garment was the mark of fashion and gentility in that part of the country in those days, a style that has outlived many of the hearty old gentlemen who did it honor, and has descended even to this day with their sons.“My son’s innocent of what they lay to him, Colonel Price,” said Mrs. Newbolt, with impressive dignity which lifted her immediately in the colonel’s regard.Even an inferior woman could not associate with a superior man that long without some of his gentility passing to her, thought he. Colonel Price inclined his head gravely.“Madam, Peter Newbolt’s son never would commit a crime, much less the crime of murder,” he said, yet with more sincerity in his words, perhaps, than lay in his heart.“I only ask you to hold back your decision on him till you can learn the truth,” said she, unconsciously passing over the colonel’s declaration of confidence. “You don’t remember Joe maybe, for he was only a little shaver the last time you stopped at our house when you was canvassin’ for office. That’s been ten or ’leven–maybe more–years ago. Joe, he’s growed considerable since then.”“They do, they shoot up,” said the colonel encouragingly.“Yes; but Joe he’s nothing like me. He runs after his father’s side of the family, and he’s a great big man in size now, Colonel Price; but he’s as soft at heart as a dove.”So she talked on, telling him what she knew. When she had finished laying the case of Joe before him, the colonel sat178thinking it over a bit, one hand in his beard, his head slightly bowed. Mrs. Newbolt watched him with anxious eyes. Presently he looked at her and smiled. A great load of uncertainty went up from her heart in a sigh.“The first thing to do is to get him a lawyer, and the best one we can nail,” the colonel said.She nodded, her face losing its worried tension.“And the next thing is for Joe to make a clean breast of everything, holding back nothing that took place between him and Isom that night.”“I’ll tell him to do it,” said she eagerly, “and I know he will when I tell him you said he must.”“I’ll go over to the sheriff’s with you and see him,” said the colonel, avoiding the use of the word “jail” with a delicacy that was his own.“I’m beholden to you, Colonel Price, for all your great kindness,” said she.There had been no delay in the matter of returning an indictment against Joe. The grand jury was in session at that time, opportunely for all concerned, and on the day that Joe was taken to the county jail the case was laid before that body by the prosecuting attorney. Before the grand jury adjourned that day’s business a true bill had been returned against Joe Newbolt, charging him with the murder of Isom Chase.There was in Shelbyville at that time a lawyer who had mounted to his profession like a conqueror, over the heads of his fellow-townsmen as stepping-stones. Perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that the chins of the men of Shelbyville were the rungs in this ladder, for the lawyer had risen from the barber’s chair. He had shaved and sheared his way from that ancient trade, in which he had been respected as an able hand, to the equally ancient profession, in which he was cutting a rather ludicrous and lumbering figure.179But he had that enterprise and lack of modesty which has lately become the fashion among young lawyers–and is spreading fast among the old ones, too–which carried him into places and cases where simply learning would have left him without a brief. If a case did not come to Lawyer Hammer, Lawyer Hammer went to the case, laid hold of it by force, and took possession of it as a kidnaper carries off a child.Hammer was a forerunner of the type of lawyer so common in our centers of population today, such as one sees chasing ambulances through the streets with a business-card in one hand and a contract in the other; such as arrives at the scene of wreck, fire, and accident along with the undertaker, and always ahead of the doctors and police.Hammer had his nose in the wind the minute that Constable Frost came into town with his prisoner. Before Joe had been in jail an hour he had engaged himself to defend that unsophisticated youngster, and had drawn from him an order on Mrs. Newbolt for twenty-five dollars. He had demanded fifty as his retainer, but Joe knew that his mother had but twenty-five dollars saved out of his wages, and no more. He would not budge a cent beyond that amount.So, as Mrs. Newbolt and Colonel Price approached the jail that morning, they beheld the sheriff and Lawyer Hammer coming down the steps of the county prison, and between them Joe, likeEugene Aram, “with gyves upon his wrists.” The sheriff was taking Joe out to arraign him before the circuit judge to plead to the indictment.The court convened in that same building where all the county’s business was centered, and there was no necessity for taking the prisoner out through one door and in at another, for there was a passage from cells to court-rooms. But if he had taken Joe that way, the sheriff would have lost a seldom-presented opportunity of showing himself on the180streets in charge of a prisoner accused of homicide, to say nothing of the grand opening for the use of his ancient wrist-irons.Lawyer Hammer also enjoyed his distinction in that short march. He leaned over and whispered in his client’s ear, so that there would be no doubt left in the public understanding of his relations to the prisoner, and he took Joe’s arm and added his physical support to his legal as they descended the steps.Mrs. Newbolt was painfully shocked by the sight of the irons on Joe’s wrists. She groaned as if they clamped the flesh of her own.“Oh, they didn’t need to do that,” she moaned.Joe doubtless heard her, for he lifted his face and ran his eyes through the crowd which had gathered. When he found her he smiled. That was the first look Colonel Price ever had taken into the lad’s face.“No,” said he, answering her anguished outbreak with a fervency that came from his heart, “there was no need of that at all.”They followed the sheriff and his charge into the court-room, where Mrs. Newbolt introduced Colonel Price to her son. While Joe and his mother sat in whispered conversation at the attorney’s table, the colonel studied the youth’s countenance.He had expected to meet a weak-faced, bony-necked, shock-headed type of gangling youngster such as ranged the Kentucky hills in his own boyhood. At best he had hoped for nothing more than a slow-headed, tobacco-chewing rascal with dodging, animal eyes. The colonel’s pleasure, then, both as an artist and an honest man, was great on beholding this unusual face, strong and clear, as inflexible in its molded lines of high purpose and valiant deeds as a carving in Flemish oak.181Here was the Peter Newbolt of long ago, remodeled in a stronger cast, with more nobility in his brow, more promise in his long, bony jaw. Here was no boy at all, but a man, full-founded and rugged, and as honest as daylight, the colonel knew.Colonel Price was prepared to believe whatever that young fellow might say, and to maintain it before the world. He was at once troubled to see Hammer mixed up in the case, for he detested Hammer as a plebeian smelling of grease, who had shouldered his unwelcome person into a company of his betters, which he could neither dignify nor grace.The proceedings in court were brief. Joe stood, upon the reading of the long, rambling information by the prosecuting attorney, and entered a calm and dignified plea of not guilty. He was held without bond for trial two weeks from that day.In the sheriff’s office Mrs. Newbolt and the colonel sat with Joe, his wrists free from the humiliating irons, and talked the situation over. Hammer was waiting on the outside. Colonel Price having waved him away, not considering for a moment the lowering of himself to include Hammer in the conference.The colonel found that he could not fall into an easy, advisory attitude with Joe. He could not even suggest what he had so strongly recommended to Mrs. Newbolt before meeting her son–that he make a clean breast of all that took place between himself and Isom Chase before the tragedy. Colonel Price felt that he would be taking an offensive and unwarranted liberty in offering any advice at all on that head. Whatever his reasons for concealment and silence were, the colonel told himself, the young man would be found in the end justified; or if there was a revelation to be made, then he would make it at the proper time without being pressed. Of that the colonel felt sure. A gentleman could be trusted.182But there was another matter upon which the colonel had no scruples of silence, and that was the subject of the attorney upon whom Joe had settled to conduct his affairs.“That man Hammer is not, to say the least, the very best lawyer in Shelbyville,” said he.“No, I don’t suppose he is,” allowed Joe.“Now, I believe in you, Joe, as strong as any man can believe in another––”“Thank you, sir,” said Joe, lifting his solemn eyes to the colonel’s face. The colonel nodded his acknowledgment.“But, no matter how innocent you are, you’ve got to stand trial on this outrageous charge, and the county attorney he’s a hard and unsparing man. You’ll need brains on your side as well as innocence, for innocence alone seldom gets a man off. And I’m sorry to tell you, son, that Jeff Hammer hasn’t got the brains you’ll need in your lawyer. He never did have ’em, and he never will have ’em–never in this mortal world!”“I thought he seemed kind of sharp,” said Joe, coloring a little at the colonel’s implied charge that he had been taken in.“He is sharp,” admitted the colonel, “but that’s all there is to him. He can wiggle and squirm like a snake; but he’s got no dignity, and no learnin’, and what he don’t know about law would make a book bigger than the biggest dictionary you ever saw.”“Land’s sake!” said Mrs. Newbolt, lifting up her hands despairingly.“Oh, I guess he’ll do, Colonel Price,” said Joe.“My advice would be to turn him out and put somebody else in his place, one of the old, respectable heads of the profession here, like Judge Burns.”“I wouldn’t like to do that, colonel,” said Joe.“Well, we’ll see how he behaves,” the colonel yielded, seeing183that Joe felt in honor bound to Hammer, now that he had engaged him. “We can put somebody else in if he goes to cuttin’ up too many didoes and capers.”Joe agreed that they could, and gave his mother a great deal of comfort and assurance by his cheerful way of facing what lay ahead of him. He told her not to worry on his account, and not to come too often and wear herself out in the long walk.“Look after the chickens and things, Mother,” said he, “and I’ll be out of here in two weeks to help you along. There’s ten dollars coming to you from Isom’s; you collect that and buy yourself some things.”He told her of the order that he had given Hammer for the retaining fee, and asked her to take it up.“I’ll make it up to you, Mother, when I get this thing settled and can go to work again,” said he.Tears came into her eyes, but no trace of emotion was to be marked by any change in her immobile face.“Lord bless you, son, it all belongs to you!” she said.“Do you care about reading?” the colonel inquired, scarcely supposing that he did, considering the chances which had been his for development in that way.Mrs. Newbolt answered for Joe, who was slow and deliberative of speech, and always stopped to weigh his answer to a question, no matter how obvious the reply must be.“Oh, Colonel Price, if you could see him!” said she proudly. “Before he was ten years old he’d read theCottage Encyclopedyand theImitationand the Bible–from back to back!”“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re of a studious mind,” said the colonel.As often as Joe had heard his mother boast of his achievements with those three notable books, he had not yet grown hardened to it. It always gave him a feeling of foolishness, and drowned him in blushes. Now it required some time for184him to disentangle himself, but presently he looked at the colonel with a queer smile, as he said:“Mother always tells that on me.”“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” comforted the colonel, marking his confusion.“And all the books he’s borrowed since then!” said she, conveying a sense of magnitude by the stress of her expression. “He strained his eyes so when he was seventeen readin’ Shuckspur’s writings that the teacher let him have I thought he’d have to put on specs.”“My daughter and I have a considerable number of books,” said the colonel, beginning to feel about for a bit more elegance in his method of expression, as a thing due from one man of culture to another, “and if you will express your desires I’m sure we shall be glad to supply you if the scope of our library permits.”Joe thanked him for the offer, that strange little smile coming over his face again.“It wouldn’t take much of a library, Colonel Price, to have a great many books in it that I’ve never read,” said he. “I haven’t been easy enough in my mind since this thing came up to think about reading–I’ve got a book in my pocket that I’d forgotten all about until you mentioned books.” He lifted the skirt of his short coat, his pocket bulging from the volume wedged into it. “I’ll have a job getting it out, too,” said he.“It don’t seem to be a very heavy volume,” smiled the colonel. “What work is it?”“It’s the Book,” said Joe.Colonel Price laid his hand on the lad’s shoulder and looked him straight in the face.“Then you’ve got by you the sum and substance of all knowledge, and the beginning and the end of all philosophy,” said he. “With that work in your hand you need no other, for it’s the father of all books.”185“I’ve thought that way about it myself sometimes,” said Joe, as easy and confident in his manner with the colonel, who represented a world to which he was a stranger from actual contact, as a good swimmer in water beyond his depth.“But if you happen to be coming over this way in a day or two you might stop in if it wouldn’t trouble you, and I could name over to you a few books that I’ve been wanting to read for a long time.”“I intend to lighten your brief period of confinement as much as it is in my power to do,” declared the colonel, “and I can speak for my daughter when I say that she will share my anxiety to make you as comfortable as human hands can make you in this place, Joe. We’ll come over and cheer you every little while.”Mrs. Newbolt had sat by, like one who had been left behind at a way-station by an express-train, while the colonel and Joe had talked. They had gone beyond her limited powers; there was nothing for her to do but wait for them to come back. Now the colonel had reached her point of contact again.“You’ll be rewarded for your kindness to the widow’s son,” said she, nodding her head earnestly, tears shining in her eyes.When he was leaving, Colonel Price felt that he must make one more effort to induce Joe to discharge Hammer and put his case into the hands of a more competent man. Joe was firm in his determination to give Hammer a chance. He was a little sensitive on the matter under the rind, the colonel could see.“If I was to hire the best lawyer I could find, Colonel Price, people would say then that I was guilty, sure enough,” said Joe. “They’d say I was depending more on the lawyer than myself to come clear. Well, colonel, you know that isn’t the case.”That seemed to settle it, at least for the present. The186colonel summoned the sheriff, who took Joe to his cell. As the colonel and Mrs. Newbolt passed out, Attorney Hammer appeared, presenting his order for the money.Mrs. Newbolt carried her savings with her. When she had paid Hammer she had sixty cents left in her calloused palm.“That’s egg money,” said she, tying it in the corner of her handkerchief. “Oh, colonel, I forgot to ask the sheriff, but do you reckon they’ll give my Joe enough to eat?”“I’ll see to that,” said Hammer officiously.Hammer was a large, soft man in an alpaca-coat and white shirt without a collar. His hair was very black and exceedingly greasy, and brushed down upon his skull until it glittered, catching every ray of light in his vicinity like a bucket of oil. He walked in long strides, with a sliding motion of the feet, and carried his hands with the palms turned outward, as if ready instantly to close upon any case, fee, or emolument which came in passing contact with him, even though it might be on its way to somebody else.Mrs. Newbolt was not unfavorably impressed with him, for he seemed very officious and altogether domineering in the presence of the sheriff, but her opinion may have been influenced perhaps by Joe’s determination to have him whether or no. She thanked him for his promise of good offices in Joe’s behalf, and he took her arm and impeded her greatly in her progress down the steps.After Mrs. Newbolt had taken some refreshment in the colonel’s house, she prepared to return home.“If I had a hoss, madam,” said the colonel, “I’d hitch up and carry you home. But I don’t own a hoss, and I haven’t owned one for nine years, since the city grew up so around me I had to sell off my land to keep the taxes from eatin’ me up. If I did own a hoss now,” he laughed, “I’d have no place to keep him except under the bed, like they do the houn’-dogs back in Kentucky.”187She made light of the walk, for Joe’s bright and sanguine carriage had lightened her sorrow. She had hope to walk home with, and no wayfarer ever traveled in more pleasant company.The colonel and his daughter pressed her to make their home her resting-place when in town, even inviting her to take up her abode there until the trial. This generous hospitality she could not accept on account of the “critters” at home which needed her daily care, and the eggs which had to be gathered and saved and sold, all against the happy day when her boy Joe would walk out free and clear from the door of the county jail.

Mint grew under the peach-trees in Colonel Henry Price’s garden, purple-stemmed mint, with dark-green, tender leaves. It was not the equal of the mint, so the colonel contended with provincial loyalty, which grew back in Kentucky along the clear, cool mountain streams. But, picked early in the morning with the dew on it, and then placed bouquet-wise in a bowl of fresh well-water, to stand thus until needed, it made a very competent substitute for the Kentucky herb.

In that cool autumn weather mint was at its best, and Colonel Price lamented, as he gathered it that morning, elbow-deep in its dewy fragrance, that the need of it was passing with the last blaze of October days.

Yet it was comforting to consider how well-balanced the seasons and men’s appetites were. With the passing of the season for mint, the desire for it left the palate. Frosty mornings called for the comfort of hot toddy, wintry blasts for frothing egg-nog in the cup. Man thirsted and nature satisfied; the economy of the world was thus balanced and all was well. So reasoned Colonel Price comfortably, after his way.

Colonel Price straightened up from his mint-picking with dew on his arm and a flush of gathered blood in his cheeks above his beard. He looked the philosopher and humanitarian that he was that morning, his breast-length white beard blowing, his long and thick white hair brushed back in a rising wave from his broad forehead. He was a tall and spare man, slender of hand, small of foot, with the crinkles of past172laughter about his eyes, and in his face benevolence. One would have named him a poet at first look, and argued for the contention on further acquaintance.

But Colonel Price was not a poet, except at heart, any more than he was a soldier, save in name. He never had trod the bloody fields of war, but had won his dignified and honorable title in the quiet ways of peace. Colonel Price was nothing less than an artist, who painted many things because they brought him money, and one thing because he loved it and could do it well.

He painted prize-winning heifers and horses; portraits from the faces of men as nature had made them, with more or less fidelity, and from faded photographs and treasured daguerreotypes of days before and during the war, with whatever embellishments their owners required. He painted plates of apples which had taken prizes at the county fair, and royal pumpkins and kingly swine which had won like high distinctions. But the one thing he painted because he loved it, and could do it better than anybody else, was corn.

At corn Colonel Price stood alone. He painted it in bunches hanging on barn doors, and in disordered heaps in the husk, a gleam of the grain showing here and there; and he painted it shelled from the cob. No matter where or how he painted it, his corn always was ripe and seasoned, like himself, and always so true to nature, color, form, crinkle, wrinkle, and guttered heart, that farmers stood before it marveling.

Colonel Price’s heifers might be–very frequently they were–hulky and bumpy and out of proportion, his horses strangely foreshortened and hindlengthened; but there never was any fault to be found with his corn. Corn absolved him of all his sins against animate and inanimate things which had stood before his brush in his long life; corn173apotheosized him, corn lifted him to the throne and put the laurel upon his old white locks.

The colonel had lived in Shelbyville for more than thirty years, in the same stately house with its three Ionic pillars reaching from ground to gable, supporting the two balconies facing toward the east. A square away on one hand was the court-house, a square away on the other the Presbyterian church; and around him were the homes of men whom he had seen come there young, and ripen with him in that quiet place. Above him on the hill stood the famous old college, its maples and elms around it, and coming down from it on each side of the broad street which led to its classic door.

Colonel Price turned his thoughts from mint to men as he came across the dewy lawn, his gleanings in his hand, his bare head gleaming in the morning sun. He had heard, the evening before, of the arrest of Peter Newbolt’s boy for the murder of Isom Chase, and the news of it had come to him with a disturbing shock, almost as poignant as if one of his own blood had been accused.

The colonel knew the sad story of Peter marrying below his estate away back there in Kentucky long ago. The Newbolts were blue-grass people, entitled to mate with the best in the land. Peter had debased his blood by marrying a mountain girl. Colonel Price had held it always to Peter’s credit that he had been ashamed of hismésalliance, and had plunged away into the woods of Missouri with his bride to hide her from the eyes of his aristocratic family and friends.

Back in Kentucky the colonel’s family and the Newbolt’s had been neighbors. A few years after Peter made his dash across the Mississippi with his bride, and the journey on horseback to his new home, young Price had followed, drawn to Shelbyville by the fame of that place at a seat of culture and knowledge, which even in that early day had spread afar. The colonel–not having won his title then–came across174the river with his easel under one arm and his pride under the other. He had kept both of them in honor all those years.

On the hopes and ambitions of those early days the colonel had realized, in a small way, something in the measure of a man who sets to work with the intention of making a million and finds himself content at last to count his gains by hundreds. He had taken up politics as a spice to the placid life of art, and once had represented his district in the state assembly, and four times had been elected county clerk. Then he had retired on his honors, with a competence from his early investments and an undivided ambition to paint corn.

Through all those years he had watched the struggles of Peter Newbolt, who never seemed able to kick a foothold in the steps of success, and he had seen him die at last, with his unrealized schemes of life around him. And now Peter’s boy was in jail, charged with slaying old Isom Chase. Death had its compensations, at the worst, reflected the colonel. It had spared Peter this crowning disgrace.

That boy must be a throw-back, thought the colonel, to the ambuscading, feud-fighting men on his mother’s side. The Newbolts never had been accused of crime back in Kentucky. There they had been the legislators, the judges, the governors, and senators. Yes, thought the colonel, coming around the corner of the house, lifting the fragrant bunch of mint to his face and pausing a step while he drank its breath; yes, the boy must be a throw-back. It wasn’t in the Newbolt blood to do a thing like that.

The colonel heard the front gate close sharply, drawn to by the stone weight which he had arranged for that purpose, having in mind the guarding of his mint-bed from the incursions of dogs. He wondered who could be coming in so early, and hastened forward to see. A woman was coming up the walk toward the house.175

She was tall, and soberly clad, and wore a little shawl over her head, which she held at her chin with one hand. The other hand she extended toward the colonel with a gesture of self-depreciation and appeal as she hurried forward in long strides.

“Colonel Price, Colonel Price, sir! Can I speak to you a minute?” she asked, her voice halting from the shortness of breath.

“Certainly, ma’am; I am at your command,” said the colonel.

“Colonel, you don’t know me,” said she, a little inflection of disappointment in her tone.

She stood before him, and the little shawl over her hair fell back to her shoulders. Her clothing was poor, her feet were covered with dust. She cast her hand out again in that little movement of appeal.

“Mrs. Newbolt, Peter Newbolt’s widow, upon my soul!” exclaimed the colonel, shocked by his own slow recognition. “I beg your pardon, madam. I didn’t know you at first, it has been so long since I saw you. But I was thinking of you only the minute past.”

“Oh, I’m in such trouble, Colonel Price!” said she.

Colonel Price took her by the arm with tender friendliness.

“Come in and rest and refresh yourself,” said he. “You surely didn’t walk over here?”

“Yes, it’s only a step,” said she.

“Five or six miles, I should say,” ventured the colonel.

“Oh, no, only four. Have you heard about my boy Joe?”

The colonel admitted that he had heard of his arrest.

“I’ve come over to ask your advice on what to do,” said she, “and I hope it won’t bother you much, Colonel Price. Joe and me we haven’t got a friend in this world!”

“I will consider it a duty and a pleasure to assist the boy176in any way I can,” said the colonel in perfunctory form. “But first come in, have some breakfast, and then we’ll talk it over. I’ll have to apologize for Miss Price. I’m afraid she’s abed yet,” said he, opening the door, showing his visitor into the parlor.

“I’m awful early,” said Mrs. Newbolt hesitating at the door. “It’s shameful to come around disturbin’ folks at this hour. But when a body’s in trouble, Colonel Price, time seems long.”

“It’s the same with all of us,” said he. “But Miss Price will be down presently. I think I hear her now. Just step in, ma’am.”

She looked deprecatingly at her dusty shoes, standing there in the parlor door, her skirts gathered back from them.

“If I could wipe some of this dust off,” said she.

“Never mind that; we are all made of it,” the colonel said. “I’ll have the woman set you out some breakfast; afterward we’ll talk about the boy.”

“I thank you kindly, Colonel Price, but I already et, long ago, what little I had stomach for,” said she.

“Then if you will excuse me for a moment, madam?” begged the colonel, seeing her seated stiffly in an upholstered chair.

She half rose in acknowledgment of his bow, awkward and embarrassed.

“You’re excusable, sir,” said she.

The colonel dashed away down the hall. She was only a mountain woman, certainly, but she was a lady by virtue of having been a gentleman’s wife. And she had caught him without a coat!

Mrs. Newbolt sat stiffly in the parlor in surroundings which were of the first magnitude of grandeur to her, with corn pictures adorning the walls along with some of the colonel’s early transgressions in landscapes, and the portraits of177colonels in the family line who had gone before. That was the kind of fixings Joe would like, thought she, nodding her serious head; just the kind of things that Joe would enjoy and understand, like a gentleman born to it.

“Well, he comes by it honest,” said she aloud.

Colonel Price did not keep her waiting long. He came back in a black coat that was quite as grand as Judge Little’s, and almost as long. That garment was the mark of fashion and gentility in that part of the country in those days, a style that has outlived many of the hearty old gentlemen who did it honor, and has descended even to this day with their sons.

“My son’s innocent of what they lay to him, Colonel Price,” said Mrs. Newbolt, with impressive dignity which lifted her immediately in the colonel’s regard.

Even an inferior woman could not associate with a superior man that long without some of his gentility passing to her, thought he. Colonel Price inclined his head gravely.

“Madam, Peter Newbolt’s son never would commit a crime, much less the crime of murder,” he said, yet with more sincerity in his words, perhaps, than lay in his heart.

“I only ask you to hold back your decision on him till you can learn the truth,” said she, unconsciously passing over the colonel’s declaration of confidence. “You don’t remember Joe maybe, for he was only a little shaver the last time you stopped at our house when you was canvassin’ for office. That’s been ten or ’leven–maybe more–years ago. Joe, he’s growed considerable since then.”

“They do, they shoot up,” said the colonel encouragingly.

“Yes; but Joe he’s nothing like me. He runs after his father’s side of the family, and he’s a great big man in size now, Colonel Price; but he’s as soft at heart as a dove.”

So she talked on, telling him what she knew. When she had finished laying the case of Joe before him, the colonel sat178thinking it over a bit, one hand in his beard, his head slightly bowed. Mrs. Newbolt watched him with anxious eyes. Presently he looked at her and smiled. A great load of uncertainty went up from her heart in a sigh.

“The first thing to do is to get him a lawyer, and the best one we can nail,” the colonel said.

She nodded, her face losing its worried tension.

“And the next thing is for Joe to make a clean breast of everything, holding back nothing that took place between him and Isom that night.”

“I’ll tell him to do it,” said she eagerly, “and I know he will when I tell him you said he must.”

“I’ll go over to the sheriff’s with you and see him,” said the colonel, avoiding the use of the word “jail” with a delicacy that was his own.

“I’m beholden to you, Colonel Price, for all your great kindness,” said she.

There had been no delay in the matter of returning an indictment against Joe. The grand jury was in session at that time, opportunely for all concerned, and on the day that Joe was taken to the county jail the case was laid before that body by the prosecuting attorney. Before the grand jury adjourned that day’s business a true bill had been returned against Joe Newbolt, charging him with the murder of Isom Chase.

There was in Shelbyville at that time a lawyer who had mounted to his profession like a conqueror, over the heads of his fellow-townsmen as stepping-stones. Perhaps it would be nearer the mark to say that the chins of the men of Shelbyville were the rungs in this ladder, for the lawyer had risen from the barber’s chair. He had shaved and sheared his way from that ancient trade, in which he had been respected as an able hand, to the equally ancient profession, in which he was cutting a rather ludicrous and lumbering figure.179

But he had that enterprise and lack of modesty which has lately become the fashion among young lawyers–and is spreading fast among the old ones, too–which carried him into places and cases where simply learning would have left him without a brief. If a case did not come to Lawyer Hammer, Lawyer Hammer went to the case, laid hold of it by force, and took possession of it as a kidnaper carries off a child.

Hammer was a forerunner of the type of lawyer so common in our centers of population today, such as one sees chasing ambulances through the streets with a business-card in one hand and a contract in the other; such as arrives at the scene of wreck, fire, and accident along with the undertaker, and always ahead of the doctors and police.

Hammer had his nose in the wind the minute that Constable Frost came into town with his prisoner. Before Joe had been in jail an hour he had engaged himself to defend that unsophisticated youngster, and had drawn from him an order on Mrs. Newbolt for twenty-five dollars. He had demanded fifty as his retainer, but Joe knew that his mother had but twenty-five dollars saved out of his wages, and no more. He would not budge a cent beyond that amount.

So, as Mrs. Newbolt and Colonel Price approached the jail that morning, they beheld the sheriff and Lawyer Hammer coming down the steps of the county prison, and between them Joe, likeEugene Aram, “with gyves upon his wrists.” The sheriff was taking Joe out to arraign him before the circuit judge to plead to the indictment.

The court convened in that same building where all the county’s business was centered, and there was no necessity for taking the prisoner out through one door and in at another, for there was a passage from cells to court-rooms. But if he had taken Joe that way, the sheriff would have lost a seldom-presented opportunity of showing himself on the180streets in charge of a prisoner accused of homicide, to say nothing of the grand opening for the use of his ancient wrist-irons.

Lawyer Hammer also enjoyed his distinction in that short march. He leaned over and whispered in his client’s ear, so that there would be no doubt left in the public understanding of his relations to the prisoner, and he took Joe’s arm and added his physical support to his legal as they descended the steps.

Mrs. Newbolt was painfully shocked by the sight of the irons on Joe’s wrists. She groaned as if they clamped the flesh of her own.

“Oh, they didn’t need to do that,” she moaned.

Joe doubtless heard her, for he lifted his face and ran his eyes through the crowd which had gathered. When he found her he smiled. That was the first look Colonel Price ever had taken into the lad’s face.

“No,” said he, answering her anguished outbreak with a fervency that came from his heart, “there was no need of that at all.”

They followed the sheriff and his charge into the court-room, where Mrs. Newbolt introduced Colonel Price to her son. While Joe and his mother sat in whispered conversation at the attorney’s table, the colonel studied the youth’s countenance.

He had expected to meet a weak-faced, bony-necked, shock-headed type of gangling youngster such as ranged the Kentucky hills in his own boyhood. At best he had hoped for nothing more than a slow-headed, tobacco-chewing rascal with dodging, animal eyes. The colonel’s pleasure, then, both as an artist and an honest man, was great on beholding this unusual face, strong and clear, as inflexible in its molded lines of high purpose and valiant deeds as a carving in Flemish oak.181

Here was the Peter Newbolt of long ago, remodeled in a stronger cast, with more nobility in his brow, more promise in his long, bony jaw. Here was no boy at all, but a man, full-founded and rugged, and as honest as daylight, the colonel knew.

Colonel Price was prepared to believe whatever that young fellow might say, and to maintain it before the world. He was at once troubled to see Hammer mixed up in the case, for he detested Hammer as a plebeian smelling of grease, who had shouldered his unwelcome person into a company of his betters, which he could neither dignify nor grace.

The proceedings in court were brief. Joe stood, upon the reading of the long, rambling information by the prosecuting attorney, and entered a calm and dignified plea of not guilty. He was held without bond for trial two weeks from that day.

In the sheriff’s office Mrs. Newbolt and the colonel sat with Joe, his wrists free from the humiliating irons, and talked the situation over. Hammer was waiting on the outside. Colonel Price having waved him away, not considering for a moment the lowering of himself to include Hammer in the conference.

The colonel found that he could not fall into an easy, advisory attitude with Joe. He could not even suggest what he had so strongly recommended to Mrs. Newbolt before meeting her son–that he make a clean breast of all that took place between himself and Isom Chase before the tragedy. Colonel Price felt that he would be taking an offensive and unwarranted liberty in offering any advice at all on that head. Whatever his reasons for concealment and silence were, the colonel told himself, the young man would be found in the end justified; or if there was a revelation to be made, then he would make it at the proper time without being pressed. Of that the colonel felt sure. A gentleman could be trusted.182

But there was another matter upon which the colonel had no scruples of silence, and that was the subject of the attorney upon whom Joe had settled to conduct his affairs.

“That man Hammer is not, to say the least, the very best lawyer in Shelbyville,” said he.

“No, I don’t suppose he is,” allowed Joe.

“Now, I believe in you, Joe, as strong as any man can believe in another––”

“Thank you, sir,” said Joe, lifting his solemn eyes to the colonel’s face. The colonel nodded his acknowledgment.

“But, no matter how innocent you are, you’ve got to stand trial on this outrageous charge, and the county attorney he’s a hard and unsparing man. You’ll need brains on your side as well as innocence, for innocence alone seldom gets a man off. And I’m sorry to tell you, son, that Jeff Hammer hasn’t got the brains you’ll need in your lawyer. He never did have ’em, and he never will have ’em–never in this mortal world!”

“I thought he seemed kind of sharp,” said Joe, coloring a little at the colonel’s implied charge that he had been taken in.

“He is sharp,” admitted the colonel, “but that’s all there is to him. He can wiggle and squirm like a snake; but he’s got no dignity, and no learnin’, and what he don’t know about law would make a book bigger than the biggest dictionary you ever saw.”

“Land’s sake!” said Mrs. Newbolt, lifting up her hands despairingly.

“Oh, I guess he’ll do, Colonel Price,” said Joe.

“My advice would be to turn him out and put somebody else in his place, one of the old, respectable heads of the profession here, like Judge Burns.”

“I wouldn’t like to do that, colonel,” said Joe.

“Well, we’ll see how he behaves,” the colonel yielded, seeing183that Joe felt in honor bound to Hammer, now that he had engaged him. “We can put somebody else in if he goes to cuttin’ up too many didoes and capers.”

Joe agreed that they could, and gave his mother a great deal of comfort and assurance by his cheerful way of facing what lay ahead of him. He told her not to worry on his account, and not to come too often and wear herself out in the long walk.

“Look after the chickens and things, Mother,” said he, “and I’ll be out of here in two weeks to help you along. There’s ten dollars coming to you from Isom’s; you collect that and buy yourself some things.”

He told her of the order that he had given Hammer for the retaining fee, and asked her to take it up.

“I’ll make it up to you, Mother, when I get this thing settled and can go to work again,” said he.

Tears came into her eyes, but no trace of emotion was to be marked by any change in her immobile face.

“Lord bless you, son, it all belongs to you!” she said.

“Do you care about reading?” the colonel inquired, scarcely supposing that he did, considering the chances which had been his for development in that way.

Mrs. Newbolt answered for Joe, who was slow and deliberative of speech, and always stopped to weigh his answer to a question, no matter how obvious the reply must be.

“Oh, Colonel Price, if you could see him!” said she proudly. “Before he was ten years old he’d read theCottage Encyclopedyand theImitationand the Bible–from back to back!”

“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re of a studious mind,” said the colonel.

As often as Joe had heard his mother boast of his achievements with those three notable books, he had not yet grown hardened to it. It always gave him a feeling of foolishness, and drowned him in blushes. Now it required some time for184him to disentangle himself, but presently he looked at the colonel with a queer smile, as he said:

“Mother always tells that on me.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” comforted the colonel, marking his confusion.

“And all the books he’s borrowed since then!” said she, conveying a sense of magnitude by the stress of her expression. “He strained his eyes so when he was seventeen readin’ Shuckspur’s writings that the teacher let him have I thought he’d have to put on specs.”

“My daughter and I have a considerable number of books,” said the colonel, beginning to feel about for a bit more elegance in his method of expression, as a thing due from one man of culture to another, “and if you will express your desires I’m sure we shall be glad to supply you if the scope of our library permits.”

Joe thanked him for the offer, that strange little smile coming over his face again.

“It wouldn’t take much of a library, Colonel Price, to have a great many books in it that I’ve never read,” said he. “I haven’t been easy enough in my mind since this thing came up to think about reading–I’ve got a book in my pocket that I’d forgotten all about until you mentioned books.” He lifted the skirt of his short coat, his pocket bulging from the volume wedged into it. “I’ll have a job getting it out, too,” said he.

“It don’t seem to be a very heavy volume,” smiled the colonel. “What work is it?”

“It’s the Book,” said Joe.

Colonel Price laid his hand on the lad’s shoulder and looked him straight in the face.

“Then you’ve got by you the sum and substance of all knowledge, and the beginning and the end of all philosophy,” said he. “With that work in your hand you need no other, for it’s the father of all books.”185

“I’ve thought that way about it myself sometimes,” said Joe, as easy and confident in his manner with the colonel, who represented a world to which he was a stranger from actual contact, as a good swimmer in water beyond his depth.

“But if you happen to be coming over this way in a day or two you might stop in if it wouldn’t trouble you, and I could name over to you a few books that I’ve been wanting to read for a long time.”

“I intend to lighten your brief period of confinement as much as it is in my power to do,” declared the colonel, “and I can speak for my daughter when I say that she will share my anxiety to make you as comfortable as human hands can make you in this place, Joe. We’ll come over and cheer you every little while.”

Mrs. Newbolt had sat by, like one who had been left behind at a way-station by an express-train, while the colonel and Joe had talked. They had gone beyond her limited powers; there was nothing for her to do but wait for them to come back. Now the colonel had reached her point of contact again.

“You’ll be rewarded for your kindness to the widow’s son,” said she, nodding her head earnestly, tears shining in her eyes.

When he was leaving, Colonel Price felt that he must make one more effort to induce Joe to discharge Hammer and put his case into the hands of a more competent man. Joe was firm in his determination to give Hammer a chance. He was a little sensitive on the matter under the rind, the colonel could see.

“If I was to hire the best lawyer I could find, Colonel Price, people would say then that I was guilty, sure enough,” said Joe. “They’d say I was depending more on the lawyer than myself to come clear. Well, colonel, you know that isn’t the case.”

That seemed to settle it, at least for the present. The186colonel summoned the sheriff, who took Joe to his cell. As the colonel and Mrs. Newbolt passed out, Attorney Hammer appeared, presenting his order for the money.

Mrs. Newbolt carried her savings with her. When she had paid Hammer she had sixty cents left in her calloused palm.

“That’s egg money,” said she, tying it in the corner of her handkerchief. “Oh, colonel, I forgot to ask the sheriff, but do you reckon they’ll give my Joe enough to eat?”

“I’ll see to that,” said Hammer officiously.

Hammer was a large, soft man in an alpaca-coat and white shirt without a collar. His hair was very black and exceedingly greasy, and brushed down upon his skull until it glittered, catching every ray of light in his vicinity like a bucket of oil. He walked in long strides, with a sliding motion of the feet, and carried his hands with the palms turned outward, as if ready instantly to close upon any case, fee, or emolument which came in passing contact with him, even though it might be on its way to somebody else.

Mrs. Newbolt was not unfavorably impressed with him, for he seemed very officious and altogether domineering in the presence of the sheriff, but her opinion may have been influenced perhaps by Joe’s determination to have him whether or no. She thanked him for his promise of good offices in Joe’s behalf, and he took her arm and impeded her greatly in her progress down the steps.

After Mrs. Newbolt had taken some refreshment in the colonel’s house, she prepared to return home.

“If I had a hoss, madam,” said the colonel, “I’d hitch up and carry you home. But I don’t own a hoss, and I haven’t owned one for nine years, since the city grew up so around me I had to sell off my land to keep the taxes from eatin’ me up. If I did own a hoss now,” he laughed, “I’d have no place to keep him except under the bed, like they do the houn’-dogs back in Kentucky.”187

She made light of the walk, for Joe’s bright and sanguine carriage had lightened her sorrow. She had hope to walk home with, and no wayfarer ever traveled in more pleasant company.

The colonel and his daughter pressed her to make their home her resting-place when in town, even inviting her to take up her abode there until the trial. This generous hospitality she could not accept on account of the “critters” at home which needed her daily care, and the eggs which had to be gathered and saved and sold, all against the happy day when her boy Joe would walk out free and clear from the door of the county jail.

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