he
world--could get him off. If it came to that, she would see that he had
a good one, as good as money could employ. Joe had stood by her; she
would stand by Joe. That was the extent of her concern that afternoon.

It was pleasant to stretch there in peace, with no task before her, no
rude summons to arise and work. Isom would call her no more at dawn; his
voice would be silent in that house forever more. There was no regret in
the thought, no pang, no pain.

As one lives his life, so he must be pitied in death. Soft deeds
father soft memories. There never was but one man who rose with the
recollection of pleasant dreams from pillowing his head upon a stone,
and that man was under the hand of God. Isom Chase had planted
bitterness; his memory was gall.

She was safe, and she was free. She had come into her expectations; the
pre-nuptial dreams of enjoying Isom Chase's wealth were suddenly at
hand.

Together with the old rifle and Isom's blood-stained garments, the
coroner had taken away the little bag of gold, to be used as evidence,
he said. He had taken the money, just as it was in the little sack, a
smear of blood on it, after counting it before witnesses and giving her
a receipt for the amount. Two thousand dollars; one hundred pieces of
twenty dollars each. That was the tale of the contents of the canvas bag
which had lain grinning on Isom's pulseless heart. It was not a great
amount of money, considering Isom's faculty for gaining and holding it.
It was the general belief that he had ten, twenty, times that amount,
besides his loans, hidden away, and the secret of his hiding-place had
gone out of the world with Isom.

Others said that he had put his money into lands, pointing to the many
farms which he owned and rented in the county. But be that as it might,
there was Ollie, young and handsome, well paid for her hard year as
Isom's wife, free now, and doubtless already willing at heart to make
some young man happy. Nobody blamed her for that.

It was well known that Isom had abused her, that her life had been
cheerless and lonely under his roof. Those who did not know it from
first-hand facts believed it on the general notoriety of the man.
Contact with Isom Chase had been like sleeping on a corn-husk bed; there
was no comfort in it, no matter which way one turned.

Ollie, her eyes closed languidly, now languidly opened to follow the
track of the lamb-fleece clouds, her young body feeling warm and
pleasan