ly ran down for a minute. We don't
need the light, do we, Joe? Can't you talk without it?"

"No; I want you to light the lamp," he insisted.

"I'll not do it!" she flared suddenly, turning as if to go to her room.
"You've not got any right to boss me around in my own house!"

"I don't suppose I have, Ollie, and I didn't mean to," said he, stepping
into the room.

Ollie retreated a few steps toward the inner door, and stopped. Joe
could hear her excited breathing as he flung his hat on the table.

"Ollie, what I've got to say to you has to be said sooner or later
tonight, and you'd just as well hear it now," said Joe, trying to assure
her of his friendly intent by speaking softly, although his voice was
tremulous. "Morgan's gone; he'll not be back--at least not tonight."

"Morgan?" said she. "What do you mean--what do I care where he's gone?"

Joe made no reply. He fumbled for the box behind the stove and scraped a
slow sulphur match against the pipe. Its light discovered Ollie
shrinking against the wall where she had stopped, near the door.

She was wearing a straw hat, which must have been a part of her bridal
gear. A long white veil, which she wore scarf-wise over the front
display of its flowers and fruits, came down and crossed behind her
neck. Its ends dangled upon her breast. The dress was one that Joe never
had seen her wear before, a girlish white thing with narrow ruffles. He
wondered as he looked at her with a great ache in his heart, how so much
seeming purity could be so base and foul. In that bitter moment he
cursed old Isom in his heart for goading her to this desperate bound.
She had been starving for a man's love, and for the lack of it she had
thrown herself away on a dog.

Joe fitted the chimney on the burner of the lamp, and stood in judicial
seriousness before her, the stub of the burning match wasting in a
little blaze between his fingers.

"Morgan's gone," he repeated, "and he'll never come back. I know all
about you two, and what you'd planned to do."

Joe dropped the stub of the match and set his foot on it.

Ollie stared at him, her face as white as her bridal dress, her eyes
big, like a barn-yard animal's eyes in a lantern's light. She was
gathering and wadding the ends of her veil in her hands; her lips were
open, showing the points of her small, white teeth.

"Isom--he'll kill me!" she whispered.

"Isom don't know about it," said Joe.

"You'll tell him!"

"No."

Relief fl