ned
sorrowfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She began gathering up the dishes.

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

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

She stood with hand upon the door, trailing him with her eyes as he
passed on to the barn. She felt that she had all but reached beyond the
insulation of his adolescence in that burning moment when her breath was
on hi