. A
flash of red showed on his cheekbones and under his eyes; his thin
nostrils were panting like gills.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Maybe he did, Joe."

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

Ollie knew, as well as Joe himself, that he was making the whetstone the
vehicle to carry his excuse for watching Morgan away from the farm, but
she was not certain whether this sudden shrewdness was the deep