like that to play me
out."

"You'd better stop in at Colonel Price's and rest a while before you
start back," he suggested.

"Maybe I will," said she.

She plunged her hand into the black draw-string bag which she carried on
her arm, rummaging among its contents.

"That little rambo tree you planted a couple of years ago had two apples
on it," she told him, "but I never noticed 'em all summer, the leaves
was so thick and it was such a little feller, anyhow."

"It is a little one to begin bearing," said Joe, with a boy's interest
in a thing that he has done with his own hand turning out to be
something.

"Yes; and I aimed to leave them on the tree till you could see them, but
the hard wind yesterday shook 'em off. Here they are, I've fetched 'em
to you, son."

Joe took the apples, the recollection of the high hopes which he had
centered around that little apple-tree when he planted it coming back to
him like a scented wind at dawn. He had planned to make that tree the
nucleus of an orchard, which was to grow and spread until it covered the
old home place, the fields adjoining, and lifted the curse of poverty
from the Newbolt name. It had been a boyish plan which his bondage to
Isom Chase had set back.

He had not given it up for a day while he labored in Chase's fields.
When he became his own man he always intended to take it up and put it
through. Now, there in his hand, was the first fruit of his big
intention, and in that moment Joe reviewed his old pleasant dream.

He saw again as he had pictured it before, to the relief of many a long,
hot day in Isom's fields, his thousand trees upon the hills, the laden
wagons rolling to the station with his barrels of fruit, some of it to
go to far lands across the sea. He saw again the stately house with its
white columns and deep porticoes, in the halls of which his fancy had
reveled many a happy hour, and he saw--the bars of his stone cell and
his mother's work-hardened hands clasping them, while she looked at him
with the pain of her sad heart speaking from her eyes. A heavy tear
rolled down his hollow cheek and fell upon the apples in his hand.

For the pain of prison he had not wept, nor for its shame. The vexing
circumstance of being misunderstood, the dread threat of the future had
not claimed a tear. But for a dream which had sprung like a sweet flower
in his young heart and had passed away like a mist, he wept.

His mother knew nothing about that blasted