most savage and barbarous fashion.

Isom's old wife must have shifted in her grave at sight of the prodigal
repast which Ollie soon spread on the kitchen table. Granting, of
course, that people in their graves are cognizant of such things, which,
according to this old standard of comparison in human amazement, they
must be.

But whether the old wife turned over or lay quiescent in the place where
they put her when they folded her tired old hands upon her shrunken
breast, it is indisputable that the new one eased the pangs of many a
hungry day in that bountiful meal. And Joe's face glowed from the fires
of it, and his eyes sparkled in the satisfaction of his long-abused
stomach.

Next day a more startling thing happened. Twice each week there passed
through the country, from farm to farm, a butcher's wagon from
Shelbyville, the county-seat, a few miles away. Isom Chase never had
been a customer of the fresh meat purveyor, and the traveling merchant,
knowing from the old man's notoriety that he never could expect him to
become one, did not waste time in stopping at his house. His surprise
was almost apoplectic when Isom stopped him and bought a soup-bone, and
it almost became fatal when the order was made a standing one. It was
such a remarkable event that the meat man told about it at every stop.
It went round the country like the news of a wedding or a death.

Isom seemed to be satisfied with the new dietary regulations, for hams
were cheap that summer, anyhow, and the season was late. Besides that,
the more that Joe ate the harder he worked. It seemed a kind of
spontaneous effort on the lad's part, as if it was necessary to burn up
the energy in surplus of the demand of his growing bone and muscle.

Ollie had picked up and brightened under the influence of ham and milk
also, although it was all a foolish yielding to appetite, as Isom very
well knew. He had beaten that weakness in himself to death with the club
of abstinence; for himself he could live happily on what he had been
accustomed to eating for thirty years and more. But as long as the
investment of ham and milk paid interest in kitchen as well as field,
Isom was grudgingly willing to see them consumed.

Ollie's brightening was only physical. In her heart she was as gloomily
hopeless as before. After his first flash of fire she had not found much
comfort or hope of comradeship in the boy, Joe Newbolt. He was so
respectful in her presence, and so bashful,