son that cool April morning as
he went forward to assume the penance that his mother's act had set for
him to bear.

And the future was clouded to Joe Newbolt now, like a window-pane with
frost upon it, where all had been so clear in his calculations but a day
before. In his heart he feared the ordeal for Isom Chase was a man of
evil repute.

Long ago Chase's first wife had died, without issue, cursed to her grave
because she had borne him no sons to labor in his fields. Lately he had
married another, a woman of twenty, although he was well along the road
to sixty-five himself. His second wife was a stranger in that community,
the daughter of a farmer named Harrison, who dwelt beyond the
county-seat.

Chase's homestead was a place pleasant enough for the abode of
happiness, in spite of its grim history and sordid reputation. The mark
of thrift was about it, orchards bloomed upon its fair slopes, its
hedges graced the highways like cool, green walls, not a leaf in excess
upon them, not a protruding bramble. How Isom Chase got all the work
done was a matter of unceasing wonder, for nothing tumbled to ruin
there, nothing went to waste. The secret of it was, perhaps, that when
Chase _did_ hire a man he got three times as much work out of him as a
laborer ordinarily performed.

There were stories abroad that Chase was as hard and cruel to his young
wife as he had been to his old, but there was no better warrant for them
than his general reputation. It was the custom in those days for a woman
to suffer greater indignities and cruelties than now without public
complaint. There never had been a separation of man and wife in that
community, there never had been a suit for divorce. Doubtless there were
as many unhappy women to the square mile there as in other places, but
custom ruled that they must conceal their sorrows in their breasts.

To all of these things concerning Isom Chase, Joe Newbolt was no
stranger. He knew, very well indeed, the life that lay ahead of him as
the bondboy of that old man as he went forward along the dew-moist road
that morning.

Early as it was, Isom Chase had been out of bed two hours or more when
Joe arrived. The scents of frying food came out of the kitchen, and Isom
himself was making a splash in a basin of water--one thing that he could
afford to be liberal with three times a day--on the porch near the open
door.

Joe had walked three miles, the consuming fires of his growing body were