t men sometimes turn out to be the nimblest
cock-pheasants during that interesting period, and, like those vain
birds of the jungles, they strut and dance and cut dazzling capers
before the eyes of the ladies when they want to strike up a matrimonial
bargain.

Isom Chase had done that. He had been a surprising lover for a dry man
of his years, spurring around many a younger man in the contest for
Ollie's hand. Together with parental encouragement and her own vain
dreams, she had not found it hard to say the word that made her his
wife. But the gay feathers had fallen from him very shortly after their
wedding day, revealing the worm which they had hidden; the bright colors
of his courtship parade had faded like the fustian decorations of a
carnival in the rain.

Isom was a man of bone and dry skin, whose greed and penury had starved
his own soul. He had brought her there and put burdens upon her, with
the assurance that it would be only for a little while, until somebody
could be hired to take the work off her hands. Then he had advanced the
plea of hard times, when the first excuse had worn out; now he had
dropped all pretenses. She was serving, as he had married her to serve,
as he had brought her there in unrecompensed bondage to serve, and hope
was gone from her horizon, and her tears were undried upon her cheeks.

Isom had profited by a good day's work from Joe, and he had not been
obliged to drive him to obtain it. So he was in great spirits when he
came back from the barn, where he had found the calf coming on sturdily
and with great promise. He put out the lantern and turned the lamp down
a shade seeing that it was consuming a twentieth more oil than necessary
to light Ollie about her work. Then he sat down beside the table,
stretching his long legs with a sigh.

Ollie was washing the few dishes which had served for supper, moving
between table and sink with quick competence, making a neat figure in
the somber room. It was a time when a natural man would have filled his
pipe and brought out the weekly paper, or sat and gossiped a comfortable
hour with his wife. But Isom never had cheered his atrophied nerves with
a whiff of tobacco, and as for the county paper, or any paper whatever
except mortgages and deeds, Isom held all of them to be frauds and
extravagances which a man was better off without.

"Well, what do you think of the new hand?" asked Isom, following her
with his eyes.

"I didn't pay any partic