, and put it down with a clatter; she opened the stove
and rammed the fire with needless severity with the poker, and it
snapped back at her, shooting sparks against her hand.

"Mother, you've bound me out!" said he, his voice unsteady in its
accusing note.

She looked at him, her hands starting out in a little movement of
appeal. He turned from the table and sat very straight and stern in his
chair, his gaunt face hollowed in shadows, his wild hair falling across
his brow.

"Oh, I sold you! I sold you!" she wailed.

She sat again in her place at the table, spiritless and afraid, her
hands limp in her lap.

"You've bound me out!" Joe repeated harshly, his voice rasping in his
throat.

"I never meant to do it, Joe," she pleaded in weak defense; "but Isom,
he said nothing else would save us from the county farm. I wanted to
wait and ask you, Joe, and I told him I wanted to ask you, but he said
it would be too late!"

"Yes. What else did he say?" asked Joe, his hands clenched, his eyes
peering straight ahead at the wall.

She related the circumstances of Chase's visit, his threat of eviction,
his declaration that she would become a county charge the moment that
she set foot in the road.

"The old liar!" said Joe.

There seemed to be nothing more for her to say. She could make no
defense of an act which stood before her in all its ugly selfishness.
Joe sat still, staring at the wall beyond the stove; she crouched
forward in her chair, as if to shrink out of his sight.

Between them the little glass lamp stood, a droning, slow-winged brown
beetle blundering against its chimney. Outside, the distant chant of
newly wakened frogs sounded; through the open door the warm air of the
April night came straying, bearing the incense of the fields and
woodlands, where fires smoldered like sleepers sending forth their
dreams.

His silence was to her the heaviest rebuke that he could have
administered. Her remorse gathered under it, her contrition broke its
bounds.

"Oh, I sold you, my own flesh and blood!" she cried, springing to her
feet, lifting her long arms above her head.

"You knew what he was, Mother; you knew what it meant to be bound out to
him for two long years and more. It wasn't as if you didn't know."

"I knew, I knew! But I done it, son, I done it! And I done it to save my
own mis'able self. I ain't got no excuse, Joe, I ain't got no excuse at
all."

"Well, Mother, you'll be safe here, anyhow, and I