ular notice to him," said she, her back toward
him as she stood scraping a pan at the sink.

"Did you hear what he said to me this morning when he was standin' there
by the steps?"

"No, I didn't hear," listlessly, indifferently.

"H'm--I thought you was listening."

"I just looked out to see who it was."

"No difference if you did hear, Ollie," he allowed generously--for Isom.
"A man's wife ought to share his business secrets, according to my way
of lookin' at it; she's got a right to know what's going on. Well, I
tell you that chap talked up to me like a man!"

Isom smacked his lips over the recollection. The promise of it was sweet
to his taste.

Ollie's heart stirred a little. She wondered if someone had entered that
house at last who would be able to set at defiance its stern decrees.
She hoped that, if so, this breach in the grim wall might let some
sunlight in time into her own bleak heart. But she said nothing to Isom,
and he talked on.

"I made a good pick when I lit on that boy," said he, with that old wise
twist of the head; "the best pick in this county, by a long shot. I
choose a man like I pick a horse, for the blood he shows. A blooded
horse will endure where a plug will fall down, and it's the same way
with a man. Ollie, don't you know that boy's got as good a strain in him
as you'll find in this part of the country?"

"I never saw him before today, I don't know his folks," said she,
apparently little interested in her husband's find.

Isom sat silent for a while, looking at the worn floor.

"Well, he's bound out to me for two years and more," said he, the
comfort of it in his hard, plain face. "I'll have a steady hand that I
can depend on now. That's a boy that'll do his duty; no doubt in my mind
about that. It may go against the grain once in a while, Ollie, like our
duty does for all of us sometimes; but, no matter how it tastes to him,
that boy Joe, he'll face it.

"He's not one of the kind that'll shirk on me when my back's turned, or
steal from me if he gets a chance, or betray any trust I put in him.
He's as poor as blue-John and as proud as Lucifer, but he's as straight
as the barrel of that old gun. He's got Kentucky blood in him, and the
best of it, too."

"He brought a funny little Bible with him," said Ollie in low voice, as
if communing with herself.

"Funny?" said Isom. "Is that so?"

"So little and fat," she explained. "I never saw one like it before. It
was there on th