The Bondboy

  THE BONDBOY

  * * * * *

  _By G. W. Ogden_

  Trail's End Claim Number One The Land of Last Chance The Rustler of Wind River The Duke of Chimney Butte The Flockmaster of Poison Creek

  * * * * *

  THE BONDBOY

  by

  GEORGE W. OGDEN

  ChicagoA. C. McClurg & Co.1922

  CopyrightA. C. McClurg & Co.1922

  Published October, 1922

  Copyrighted in Great Britain

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS I. Delivered Into Bondage 1 II. A Dry-Salt Man 21 III. The Spark in the Clod 47 IV. A Stranger at the Gate 66 V. The Secret of the Clover 84 VI. Blood 99 VII. Deliverance 114 VIII. Will He Tell? 126 IX. The Sealed Envelope 152 X. Let Him Hang 166 XI. Peter's Son 171 XII. The Sunbeam on the Wall 188 XIII. Until the Day Break 210 XIV. Deserted 228 XV. The State vs. Newbolt 241 XVI. "She Cometh Not" He Said 249 XVII. The Blow of a Friend 259 XVIII. A Name and a Message 276 XIX. The Shadow of a Dream 304 XX. "The Penalty Is Death!" 311 XXI. Ollie Speaks 325 XXII. A Summons of the Night 341 XXIII. Lest I Forget 359

  The Bondboy

  CHAPTER I

  DELIVERED INTO BONDAGE

  Sarah Newbolt enjoyed in her saturnine, brooding way the warmth of Aprilsunshine and the stirring greenery of awakening life now beginning tosoften the brown austerity of the dead winter earth. Beside her kitchenwall the pink cones of rhubarb were showing, and the fat buds of thelilacs, which clustered coppicelike in her dooryard, were ready tounlock and flare forth leaves. On the porch with its southern exposureshe sat in her low, splint-bottomed rocker, leaning forward, her elbowson her knees.

  The sun tickled her shoulders through her linsey dress, and picturedher, grotesquely foreshortened, upon the nail-drawn, warped, and beatenfloor. Her hands, nursing her cheeks, chin pivoted in their palms, werelarge and toil-distorted, great-jointed like a man's, and all thefeminine softness with which nature had endowed her seemed to have beenovercome by the masculine cast of frame and face which the hardships ofher life had developed.

  She did not seem, crouched there like an old cat warming herself in thefirst keen fires of spring, conscious of anything about her; of the lowhouse, with its battered eaves, the sprawling rail-fence in front of it,out of which the gate was gone, like a tooth; of the wild bramble ofroses, or the generations of honeysuckle which had grown, layer uponlayer--the under stratum all dead and brown--over the decaying arborwhich led up to the cracked front door. She did not seem conscious thattime and poverty had wasted the beauties of that place; that shingleswere gone from the outreaching eaves, torn away by March winds; thatstones had fallen from the chimney, squatting broad-shouldered at theweathered gable; that panes were missing from the windows, their placessupplied by boards and tacked-on cloth, or that pillows crowded intothem, making it seem a house that stopped its ears against theunfriendly things which passengers upon the highway might speak of it.

  Time and poverty were pressing upon Sarah Newbolt also, relaxing therethat bright hour in the sun, straying away from her troubles and hervexations like an autumn butterfly among the golden leaves, unmindful ofthe frost which soon must cut short its day. For, poor as she was in allthat governments put imposts upon, and men list in tax returns and carryto steel vaults to hoard away, Sarah Newbolt had her dreams. She had nogolden past; there was no golden future ready before her feet. There wasno review for her in those visions of happy days and tender memories,over which a woman half closes her eyes and smiles, or over the incenseof which a man's heart softens. Behind her stretched a wake ofturbulence and strife; ahead of her lay the banked clouds of anunsettled and insecure future.

  But she had her dreams, in which even the poorest of us may indulge whenour taskmaster in the great brickworks of this hot and heavy world isnot hard by and pressing us forward with his lash. She had her dreams ofwhat never was and never could be; of old longings, old heart-hungers,old hopes, and loves which never had come near for one moment's caressof her toil-hardened hand. Dreams which roved the world and soothed theache in her heart by their very extravagance, which even her frugalconscience could not chide; dreams which drew hot tears upon her cheeks,to trickle down among her knotted fingers and tincture the bitterness ofthings unrealized.

  The crunch of wheels in the road now startled her from her profitlessexcursions among the mist of visions and dreams. She lifted her headlike a cow startled from her peaceful grazing, for the vehicle hadstopped at the gap in the fence where the gate should have stood warderbetween its leaning posts.

  "Well, he's come," said she with the resignation of one who finds thelong expected and dreaded at hand.

  A man got out of the buggy and hitched his horse to one of the oldgate-posts, first trying it to satisfy himself that it was trustworthy,for stability in even a post on those premises, where everything wasgoing to decay, seemed unreasonable to expect. He turned up the path,bordered by blue flags, thrusting their swordpoints through the ground,and strode toward the house, with that uncouth giving at the knees whichmarks a man who long has followed the plow across furrowed fields.

  The visitor was tall and bony, brown, dry-faced, and frowning of aspect.There was severity in every line of his long, loose body; in the hardwrinkles of his forehead, in his ill-nurtured gray beard, which was soharsh that it rasped like wire upon his coat as he turned his head inquick appraisement of his surroundings. His feet were bunion-distortedand lumpy in his great coarse shoes; coarse black hair grew down uponhis broad, thick-jointed hands; a thicket of eyebrows presented, like a_chevaux-de-frise_, bristling when he drew them down in his peeringsquint.

  Sarah Newbolt rose to meet him, tall in the vigor of her pioneer stock.In her face there was a malarial smokiness of color, although it stillheld a trace of a past brightness, and her meagerness of feature gaveher mouth a set of determination which stood like a false index at thebeginning of a book or a misleading sign upon a door. Her eyes wereblack, her brows small and delicate. Back from her narrow forehead shehad drawn her plentiful dark hair in rigid unloveliness; over it shewore a knitted shawl.

  "Well, Mr. Chase, you've come to put us out, I reckon?" said she, alittle tremor in her chin, although her voice was steady and her eyesmet his with an appeal which lay too near the soul for words.

  Isom Chase drew up to the steps and placed one knotted foot upon them,standing thus in silence a little while, as if thinking it over. Thedust of the highroad was on his broad black hat, and gray upon hisgrizzly beard. In the attitude of his lean frame, in the posture of hisfoot upon the step, he seemed to be asserting a mastery over the placewhich he had invaded to the sad dispersion of Sarah Newbolt's dreams.

  "I hate to do it," he declared, speaking hurriedly, as if he held wordsbut frail vehicles in a world where deeds counted with so much greaterweight, "but I've been easy on you, ma'am; no man can say that I haven'tbeen easy."

  "I know your money's long past due," she sighed, "but if you was to giveJoe another chance, Mr. Chase, we could pay you off in time."

  "Oh, anothe
r chance, another chance!" said he impatiently. "What couldyou do with all the chances in the world, you and him--what did yourhusband ever do with his chances? He had as many of 'em as I ever did,and what did he ever do but scheme away his time on fool things thatdidn't pan out when he ought 'a' been in the field! No, you and Joecouldn't pay back that loan, ma'am, not if I was to give you forty yearsto do it in."

  "Well, maybe not," said she, drawing a sigh from the well of her sad oldheart.

  "The interest ain't been paid since Peter died, and that's more than twoyears now," said Chase. "I can't sleep on my rights that way, ma'am;I've got to foreclose to save myself."

  "Yes, you've been easy, even if we did give you up our last cow on thatthere inter-est," she allowed. "You've been as kind and easy over it, Ireckon, Mr. Chase, as a body could be. Well, I reckon me and Joe we'llhave to leave the old place now."

  "Lord knows, I don't see what there is to stay for!" said Chase feelingly,sweeping his eyes around the wired-up, gone-to-the-devil-looking place.

  "When a body's bore children in a place," she said earnestly, "andnussed 'em, and seen 'em fade away and die; and when a body's lived in ahouse for upward of forty years, and thought things in it, andeverything----"

  "Bosh!" said Isom Chase, kicking the rotting step.

  "I know it's all shacklety now," said she apologetically, "but it's hometo me and Joe!"

  Her voice trembled over the words, and she wiped her eyes with thecorner of her head-shawl; but her face remained as immobile as featurescast in metal. When one has wept out of the heart for years, as SarahNewbolt had wept, the face is no longer a barometer over the tempests ofthe soul.

  Isom Chase was silent. He stood as if reflecting his coming words,trying the loose boards of the siding with his blunt thumb.

  "Peter and I, we came here from Kentucky," said she, looking at him witha sidelong appeal, as if for permission to speak the profitlesssentiments of her heart, "and people was scarce in this part of Missourithen. I rode all the way a-horseback, and I came here, to this veryhouse, a bride."

  "I didn't take a mortgage on sentiment--I took it on the land," saidChase, out of humor with this reminiscent history.

  "You can't understand how I feel, Mr. Chase," said she, dropping herarms at her sides hopelessly. "Peter--he planted them laylocks and themroses."

  "Better 'a' planted corn--and tended to it!" grunted Chase. "Well, youcan grub 'em all up and take 'em away with you, if you want 'em. Theydon't pay interest--I suppose you've found that out."

  "Not on money," said she, reaching out her hand toward a giant lilacwith a caressing, tender air.

  "Sit down," said he in voice of command, planting himself upon theporch, his back against a post, "and let's you and I have a little talk.Where do you expect to go when you leave here; what plans have you gotfor the future?"

  "Lord, there's not a clap-board in this world that I can poke my headunder and lay claim to its shelter!" said she, sitting again in her lowrocker, shaking her head sadly.

  "Your boy Joe, he'll not be able to command man's wages for three orfour years yet," said Chase, studying her averted face as if to takepossession of even her thoughts. "He'll not be able to do much towardsupportin' you, even if he could light on to a steady, all-the-year job,which he can't, the way times is."

  "No, I don't reckon he could," said she.

  "And if I was to let you two stay on here I wouldn't be any nearer bein'paid back that four hundred dollar loan in two or three years than I amnow. It's nearly five hundred now, with the interest pilin' up, andit'll be a thousand before you know it. It'd take that boy a lifetime topay it off."

  "Peter failed," she nodded; "it was a burden on him that hackled him tothe grave. Yes, I reckon you're right. But there's no tellin' how Joehe'll turn out, Mr. Chase. He may turn out to be a better manager thanhis pap was."

  "How old is he?" asked Chase.

  "Most nineteen," said she, some kind of a faraway hope, indefinable andhazy, lifting the cloud of depression which had fallen over her, "andhe's uncommon big and stout for his age. Maybe if you'd give Joe work hecould pay it off, interest and all, by the time he's twenty-one."

  "Not much need for him," said Chase, shaking his head, "but Imight--well, I might figure around so I could take him over, on certainconditions, you understand? It all depends on your plans. If you haven'tanywhere to go when you leave this house, you're bound to land on thecounty."

  "Don't tell me that, Mr. Chase--don't tell me that!" she begged,pressing her battered hands to her eyes, rocking and moaning in herchair.

  "What's the use of puttin' the truth back of you when you're bound tocome face up to it in the end?" he asked. "I was talkin' to JudgeLittle, of the county court, about you this morning. I told him I'd haveto foreclose and take possession of this forty to save myself.

  "'It'll throw her and that boy on the county,' he says. 'Yes, I reckonit will,' I told him, 'but no man can say I've been hard on 'em.'"

  "Oh, you wouldn't throw me on the county at the end of my days, Mr.Chase!" she appealed. "Joe he'll take care of me, if you'll only givehim a chance--if you'll only give him a chance, Mr. Chase!"

  "I meant to take that up with you," said he, "on the conditions I spokeof a minute ago."

  He turned to her, as if for her consent to give expression to hismysterious terms. She nodded, and he went on:

  "In the winter time, ma'am, to tell you the plain truth, Joe wouldn't beworth wages to me, and in the summer not very much. A boy that size andage eats his head off, you might say.

  "But I'll make you this offer, out of consideration of my friendship forPeter, and your attachment for the old place, and all of that stuff:I'll take Joe over, under writing, till he's twenty-one, at ten dollarsa month and all found, winter and summer through, and allow you to stayright on here in the house, with a couple of acres for your chickens andgarden patch and your posies and all the things you set store on andprize. I'll do this for you, Missis Newbolt, but I wouldn't do it forany other human being alive."

  She turned slowly to him, an expression of mingled amazement and fear onher face.

  "You mean that you want me to bind Joe out to you till he's his ownman?" said she.

  "Well, some call it by that name," nodded Chase, "but it's nothing morethan any apprenticeship to any trade, except--oh, well, there ain't nodifference, except that there's few trades that equal the one the boy'lllearn under me, ma'am."

  "You're askin' me to bind my little son--my only child left to me of allthat I bore--you want me to bind him out to you like a nigger slave!"

  Her voice fell away to a whisper, unable to bear the horror that grewinto her words.

  "Better boys than him have been bound out in this neighborhood!" saidChase sharply. "If you don't want to do it, _don't_ do it. That's allI've got to say. If you'd rather go to the poorhouse than see your sonin steady and honorable employment, in a good home, and learning abusiness under a man that's made some success of it, that's yourlookout, not mine. But that's where you'll land the minute you set yourfoot out in that road. Then the county court'll take your boy and bindhim out to somebody, and you'll have no word to say in the matter, atall. But you can suit yourself."

  "It--kind of--shook me," she muttered, the mother-love, the honor andjustice in her quailing heart shrinking back before the threat of thatterrible disgrace--the poorhouse.

  The shadow of the poorhouse had stood in her way for years. It had beenthe fear of Peter when he was there, and his last word was one ofthankfulness to the Almighty that he had been permitted to die in afreeman's bed, under his own humble roof. That consolation was to bedenied her; the shadow of the poorhouse had advanced until it stood nowat her door. One step and it would envelop her; the taint of its blightwould wither her heart.

  Sarah Newbolt had inherited that dread of publicly confessed poverty anddependence. It had come down to her through a long line of pioneerforebears who feared neither hardship, strife nor death, so that itmight come to them without a
master and under the free sky. Only thedisgraced, the disowned, the failures, and the broken-minded made an endin the poorhouse in those vigorous days. It was a disgrace from which afamily never could hope to rise again. There, on the old farm with Petershe had been poor, as poor as the poorest, but they had been free tocome and go.

  "I know I've got the name of being a hard man and a money-grabber and adriver," said Chase with crabbed bitterness, "but who is it that givesthat reputation to me? People that can't beat me and take advantage ofme and work money out of me by their rascally schemes! I'm not a hardman by nature--my actions with you prove that, don't they?"

  "You've been as kind as a body could expect," she answered. "It's onlyright that you should have your money back, and it ain't been your faultthat we couldn't raise it. But we've done the best we could."

  "And that best only led you up to the poorhouse door," said he. "I'moffering you a way to escape it, and spend the rest of your days in theplace you're attached to, but I don't seem to get any thanks for it."

  "I am thankful to you for your offer--from the bottom of my heart I'mthankful, Mr. Chase," she hastened to declare.

  "Well, neither of us knows how Joe's going to turn out," said he. "Undermy training he might develop into a good, sober farmer, one that knowshis business and can make it pay. If he does, I promise you I'll givehim a chance on this place to redeem it. I'll put him on it to farm onshares when he fills out his time under me, my share of the crops toapply to the debt. Would that be fair?"

  "Nobody in this world couldn't say it wasn't generous and fair of you,and noble and kind, Mr. Chase," she declared, her face showing a littlecolor, the courage coming back into her eyes.

  "Then you'd better take up my offer without any more foolishness," headvised.

  "I'll have to talk it over with Joe," said she.

  "He's got nothing to do with it, I tell you," protested Chase, brushingthat phase of it aside with a sweep of his hairy hand. "You, and youalone, are responsible for him till he's twenty-one, and it's your dutyto keep him off the county and away from the disgrace of pauperism, andyourself as well."

  "I ought to see Joe about it first, Mr. Chase, I ought to talk it overwith him. Let me think a minute."

  She settled down to her pensive attitude, elbows on knees, chin inhands, and looked over the homely scene of riotous shrubbery, rackedbuildings, leaning well-curb, rotting fences. In one swift, painfulmoment she pictured what that spot would be after Isom Chase had takenpossession.

  He would uproot the lilacs; he would level the house and the chimney,stone by stone; he would fill up the well and pull down the old barnthat Peter built, and drive his plow over the hearthstone where she hadsuckled her babies in the years of her youth and hope. He wouldobliterate the landmarks of her bridal days, and sow his grain in thespot where Peter, fresh in the strong heat of youth, had anchored theirambitions.

  It was not so much for what it had been that her heart was tender to it,for the years had been heavy there and toilsome, disappointing and fullof pain; not so much for what it had been, indeed, as what she and youngPeter, with the thick black hair upon his brow, had planned to make it.It was for the romance unlived, the hope unrealized, that it was dear.And then again it was poor and pitiful, wind-shaken and old, but it washome. The thought of the desolation that waited it in the dread futurestruck her breast like the pangs of bereavement. Tears coursed down herface; sobs rose in her aching throat.

  Joe, she thought, would do that much for her and the old home place; itwould be but a little more than two years of sacrifice for him, at themost, with the bright hope of independence and redemption at the end.Being bound out would not be so disgraceful as going to the poorhouse.Joe would do it for her, she was sure of that. But it would be better towait until evening and ask him.

  "Joe, he'll be along home from his work about dusk," said she, "and wecould let you know tomorrow."

  "Tomorrow," said Isom Chase, rising stiffly, "I'll have to send thesheriff here with the papers. Tomorrow, ma'am, will be too late."

  That dreadful picture swept across her inner vision once more--thechimney down, the house gone. She saw corn growing over the spot whereshe sat that moment; she remembered that Isom Chase had plowed up aburying-ground once and seeded it to timothy.

  "What will I have to do to bind Joe over to you?" she asked, facing himin sudden resolution.

  "We'll git in the buggy," said he, with new friendliness, seeing that hehad won, "and drive over to Judge Little's. He can make out the papersin a few minutes, and I'll pay you a month's wages in advance. That willfix you up for groceries and garden seeds and everything, and you'll beas snug and happy as any woman in the county."

  In less than two hours the transaction was completed, and Sarah Newboltwas back again in the home upon which she had secured her slippingtenure at the sacrifice of her son's liberty. As she began "stirring thepots for supper," as she called it, she also had time to stir the deepwaters of reflection.

  She had secured herself from the threat of the county farm, and Joe hadbeen the price; Joe, her last-born, the sole remaining one of the sixwho had come to her and gone on again into the mists.

  She began to fear in her heart when she stood off and viewed the resultof her desperate panic, the pangs of which Isom Chase had adroitlymagnified. If Joe could work for Isom Chase and thus keep her from thepoorhouse, could he not have worked for another, free to come and go ashe liked, and with the same security for her?

  Chase said that he had not taken a mortgage on sentiment, but he hadmade capital out of it in the end, trading upon her affection for theold home and its years-long associations. As the gloomy evening deepenedand she stood in the door watching for her son's return, she saw throughthe scheme of Isom Chase. She never would have been thrown on the countywith Joe to depend on; the question of his ability to support both ofthem admitted of no debate.

  Joe's industry spoke for that, and that was Isom Chase's reason forwanting him. Isom wanted him because he was strong and trustworthy,honest and faithful. And she had bargained him in selfishness and soldhim in cowardice, without a word from him, as she might have sold a cowto pay a pressing debt.

  The bargain was binding. Judge Little had pressed that understanding ofit upon her. It was as irrevocable as a deed signed and sealed. Joecould not break it; she could not set it aside. Isom Chase was empoweredwith all the authority of absolute master.

  "If he does anything that deserves thrashing for, I've got a right tothrash him, do you understand that?" Isom had said as he stood there inthe presence of Judge Little, buttoning his coat over the document whichtransferred Joe's services to him.

  Her heart had contracted at the words, for the cruelty of Isom Chase wasnotorious. A bound boy had died in his service not many years before,kicked by a mule, it was said. There had been mutterings at that time,and talk of an investigation, which never came to a head because thebound lad was nobody, taken out of the county home. But the fear in thewidow's heart that moment was not for her son; it was for Isom Chase.

  "Lord 'a' mercy, Mr. Chase, you mustn't never strike Joe!" she warned."You don't know what kind of a boy he is, Mr. Chase. I'm afraid he mightup and hurt you maybe, if you ever done that."

  "I'll handle him in my own way," with portentous significance; "but Iwant you to understand my rights fully at the start."

  "Yes, sir," she answered meekly.

  Joe was coming now, pitchfork over his shoulder, from the field where hehad been burning corn-stalks, making ready for the plow. She hastened toset out a basin of water on the bench beside the kitchen door, andturned then into the room to light the lamp and place it on the waitingtable.

  Joe appeared at the door, drying his hands on the dangling towel. He wasa tall, gaunt-faced boy, big-boned, raw-jointed, the framework forprodigious strength. His shoulders all but filled the narrow doorway,his crown came within an inch of its lintel. His face was glowing fromthe scrubbing which he had given it with home-made lye soap, hisdrenched hair fell
in heavy locks down his deep forehead.

  "Well, Mother, what's happened?" he asked, noting her uneasiness as shesat waiting him at the table, the steaming coffee-pot at her hand.

  "Sit down and start your supper, son, and we'll talk as we go along,"said she.

  Joe gave his hair a "lick and a promise" with the comb, and took hisplace at the table. Mrs. Newbolt bent her head and pronounced thethanksgiving which that humble board never lacked, and she drew it outto an amazing and uncomfortable length that evening, as Joe's impatientstomach could bear clamorous witness.

  Sarah Newbolt had a wide fame as a religious woman, and a woman whocould get more hell-fire into her belief and more melancholy pleasureout of it than any hard-shell preacher in the land. It was a dolefulreligion, with little promise or hope in it, and a great deal of bloodand suffering between the world and its doubtful reward; but SarahNewbolt lived according to its stern inflexibility, and sang itssorrowful hymns by day, as she moved about the house, in a voice thatcarried a mile. But for all the grimness in her creed, there was not abeing alive with a softer heart. She would have divided her last squareof corn-bread with the wayfarer at her door, without question of hisworth or unworthiness, his dissension, or his faith.

  "Mr. Chase was here this afternoon, Joe," said she as the lad began hissupper.

  "Well, I suppose he's going to put us out?"

  Joe paused in the mixing of gravy and corn-bread--designed to beconveyed to his mouth on the blade of his knife--and lifted inquiringeyes to his mother's troubled face.

  "No, son; we fixed it up," said she.

  "You fixed it up?" he repeated, his eyes beaming with pleasure. "Is hegoing to give us another chance?"

  "You go on and eat your supper, Joe; we'll talk it over when you'rethrough. Lands, you must be tired and hungry after workin' so hard allafternoon!"

  He was too hungry, perhaps, to be greatly troubled by her air ofuneasiness and distraction. He bent over his plate, not noting that shesipped her coffee with a spoon, touching no food. At last he pushed backwith a sigh of repletion, and smiled across at his mother.

  "So you fixed it up with him?"

  "Yes, I went into a dishonorable deal with Isom Chase," said she, "and Idon't know what you'll say when you hear what's to be told to you,Joe."

  "What do you mean by 'dishonorable deal'?" he asked, his face growingwhite.

  "I don't know what you'll say, Joe, I don't know what you'll say!"moaned she, shaking her head sorrowfully.

  "Well, Mother, I can't make out what you mean," said he, baffled andmystified by her strange behavior.

  "Wait--I'll show you."

  She rose from the table and reached down a folded paper from among thesoda packages and tins on the shelf. Saying no more, she handed it tohim. Joe took it, wonder in his face, spread his elbows, and unfoldedthe document with its notarial seal.

  Joe was ready at printed matter. He read fast and understandingly, andhis face grew paler as his eyes ran on from line to line. When he cameto the end, where his mother's wavering signature stood above that ofIsom Chase, his head dropped a little lower, his hands lay listlessly,as if paralyzed, on the paper under his eyes. A sudden dejection seemedto settle over him, blighting his youth and buoyancy.

  Mrs. Newbolt was making out to be busy over the stove. She lifted thelid of the kettle, and put it down with a clatter; she opened the stoveand rammed the fire with needless severity with the poker, and itsnapped back at her, shooting sparks against her hand.

  "Mother, you've bound me out!" said he, his voice unsteady in itsaccusing note.

  She looked at him, her hands starting out in a little movement ofappeal. He turned from the table and sat very straight and stern in hischair, his gaunt face hollowed in shadows, his wild hair falling acrosshis brow.

  "Oh, I sold you! I sold you!" she wailed.

  She sat again in her place at the table, spiritless and afraid, herhands limp in her lap.

  "You've bound me out!" Joe repeated harshly, his voice rasping in histhroat.

  "I never meant to do it, Joe," she pleaded in weak defense; "but Isom,he said nothing else would save us from the county farm. I wanted towait and ask you, Joe, and I told him I wanted to ask you, but he saidit would be too late!"

  "Yes. What else did he say?" asked Joe, his hands clenched, his eyespeering straight ahead at the wall.

  She related the circumstances of Chase's visit, his threat of eviction,his declaration that she would become a county charge the moment thatshe set foot in the road.

  "The old liar!" said Joe.

  There seemed to be nothing more for her to say. She could make nodefense of an act which stood before her in all its ugly selfishness.Joe sat still, staring at the wall beyond the stove; she crouchedforward in her chair, as if to shrink out of his sight.

  Between them the little glass lamp stood, a droning, slow-winged brownbeetle blundering against its chimney. Outside, the distant chant ofnewly wakened frogs sounded; through the open door the warm air of theApril night came straying, bearing the incense of the fields andwoodlands, where fires smoldered like sleepers sending forth theirdreams.

  His silence was to her the heaviest rebuke that he could haveadministered. Her remorse gathered under it, her contrition broke itsbounds.

  "Oh, I sold you, my own flesh and blood!" she cried, springing to herfeet, lifting her long arms above her head.

  "You knew what he was, Mother; you knew what it meant to be bound out tohim for two long years and more. It wasn't as if you didn't know."

  "I knew, I knew! But I done it, son, I done it! And I done it to save myown mis'able self. I ain't got no excuse, Joe, I ain't got no excuse atall."

  "Well, Mother, you'll be safe here, anyhow, and I can stand it," saidJoe, brightening a little, the tense severity of his face softening."Never mind; I can stand it, I guess."

  "I'll never let you go to him--I didn't mean to do it--it wasn't fairthe way he drove me into it!" said she.

  She laid her hand, almost timidly, on her son's shoulder, and lookedinto his face. "I know you could take care of me and keep off of thecounty, even if Isom did put us out like he said he'd do, but I went anddone it, anyhow. Isom led me into it, Joe; he wasn't fair."

  "Yes, and you bound me out for about half what I'm worth to any man andcould demand for my services anywhere, Mother," said Joe, the bitternesswhich he had fought down but a moment past surging up in him again.

  "Lord forgive me!" she supplicated piteously. She turned suddenly to thetable and snatched the paper. "It wasn't fair--he fooled me into it!"she repeated. "I'll tear it up, I'll burn it, and we'll leave this placeand let him have it, and he can go on and do whatever he wants to withit--tear it down, burn it, knock it to pieces--for anything I carenow!"

  Joe restrained her as she went toward the stove, the document in herhand.

  "Wait, Mother; it's a bargain. We're bound in honor to it, we can't backdown now."

  "I'll never let you do it!" she declared, her voice rising beyond hercontrol. "I'll walk the roads and beg my bread first! I'll hoe in thefields, I'll wash folks' clothes for 'em like a nigger slave, I'll laydown my life, Joe, before I let you go into that murderin' man'shands!"

  He took the paper from her hands gently.

  "I've been thinking it over, Mother," said he, "and it might beworse--it might be a good deal worse. It gives me steady work, for onething, and you can save most of my wages, counting on the eggs you'llsell, and the few turkeys and things. After a while you can get a cowand make butter, and we'll be better off, all around. We couldn't getout of it, anyway, Mother. He's paid you money, and you've signed yourname to the contract along with Isom. If we were to pull out and leavehere, Isom could send the sheriff after me and bring me back, I guess.Even if he couldn't do that, he could sue you, Mother, and make no endof trouble. But we wouldn't leave if we could. It wouldn't be quitehonorable, or like Newbolts at all, to break our contract that way."

  "But he'll drive you to the grave, Joe!"

&
nbsp; A slow smile spread over his face. "I don't think Isom would find me agood driving horse," said he.

  "He said if you done well," she told him, brightening as she clutched atthat small stay of justification, "he'd let you work this place onshares till you paid off the loan. That was one reason----"

  "Of course," said Joe, a cheerfulness in his voice which his pale cheeksdid not sustain, "that was one thing I had in mind when I spoke. It'llall come out right. You've done the wisest thing there was to be done,Mother, and I'll fulfill your agreement to the last day."

  "You're a brave boy, Joe; you're a credit to the memory of your pap,"said she.

  "I'll go over to Isom's early in the morning," said Joe, quitesprightly, as if the arrangement had indeed solved all their troubles.He stretched his arms with a prodigious yawn. "You don't need to botherabout getting up and fixing breakfast for me, for I'll get some overthere."

  "I hope he'll give you enough," said she.

  "Don't you worry over me," he counseled kindly, "for I'll be all rightat Isom's. Sunday I'll come home and see you. Now, you take a good sleepin the morning and don't bother."

  "I'll be up before you leave," said she, her eyes overflowing withtears. "Do you reckon I could lie and sleep and slumber when my last andonly livin' one's goin' away to become a servant in the house ofbondage? And I sold you to it, Joe, my own flesh and blood!"

  There had been little tenderness between them all their days, for insuch lives of striving, poverty too often starves affection until itquits the board. But there was a certain nobility of loyalty whichoutlived the narrowness of their lot, and certain traditions of chivalryin the Newbolt heritage which now guided Joe's hand to his mother's headas she sat weeping and moaning with her arms flung upon the disorderedtable.

  "It'll be all right, Mother," he cheered her, "and the time will soonpass away. What are two years to me? Not much more than a month or twoto an old man like Isom. I tell you, this plan's the finest thing in theworld for you and me, Mother--don't you grieve over it that way."

  She was feeling the comfort of his cheerfulness when he left her to goto bed, although she was sore in conscience and spirit, sore in mind andheart.

  "The Lord never gave any woman a son like him," said she as the sound ofJoe's steps fell quiet overhead, "and I've sold him into slavery andbondage, just to save my own unworthy, coward'y, sneakin' self!"