given her only a small measure of human sympathy, she would have
clung to him, and rested in the shelter of his protection, content
against all the world. Isom had spread the thorns for his own feet, in
his insensibility to all human need of gentleness.

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

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

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

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