trade the last year of her
life for one more hour of sleep that moist spring morning.

Isom mounted the kitchen stairs and roused Joe, lumbering down again
straightway and stringing the milk-pails on his arms without waiting to
see the result of his summons.

"Send him on down to the barn when he's ready," directed Isom, jangling
away in the pale light of early day.

Ollie fumbled around in her dark corner for kindling, and started a fire
in the kitchen stove with a great rattling of lids. Perhaps there was
more alarm than necessary in this primitive and homely task, sounded
with the friendly intention of carrying a warning to Joe, who was making
no move to obey his master's call.

Ollie went softly to the staircase and listened. Joe's snore was
rumbling again, as if he traveled a heavy road in the land of dreams.
She did not feel that she could go and shake him out of his sleep and
warn him of the penalty of such remission, but she called softly from
where she stood:

"Joe! You must get up, Joe!"

But her voice was not loud enough to wake a bird. Joe slept on, like a
heavy-headed boor, and she went back to the stove to put the kettle on
to boil. The issue of his recalcitration must be left between him and
Isom. If he had good blood in him, perhaps he would fight when Isom
lifted his hand and beat him out of his sleep, she reflected, hoping
simply that it would turn out that way.

Isom came back to the house in frothing wrath a quarter of an hour
later. There was no need to ask about Joe, for the bound boy's nostrils
sounded his own betrayal.

Isom did not look at Ollie as he took the steep stairs four treads at a
step. In a moment she heard the sleeper's bed squeaking in its rickety
old joints as her husband shook him and cut short his snore in the
middle of a long flourish.

"Turn out of here!" shouted Isom in his most terrible voice--which was
to Ollie's ears indeed a dreadful sound--"turn out and git into your
duds!"

Ollie heard the old bed give an extra loud groan, as if the sleeper had
drawn himself up in it with suddenness; following that came the quick
scuffling of bare feet on the floor.

"Don't you touch me! Don't you lay hands on me!" she heard the bound boy
warn, his voice still husky with sleep.

"I'll skin you alive!" threatened Isom. "You've come here to work, not
to trifle your days away sleepin'. A good dose of strap-oil's what you
need, and I'm the man to give it to you, too!"

Isom