The Bondboy Part 62

Mrs. Newbolt flashed up in a breath.

"Why should anybody wonder, I'd like for you to tell me?" she demanded.

"Joe he's good enough for her, and too good for anybody else in this county! Who else was there for Joe, who else was there for Alice?"

Sol did not attempt to answer. It was beyond him, the way some people figgered, he thought in the back of his mind. There was his own girl, Tilda Bell. He considered her the equal to any Newbolt that ever straddled a horse and rode over from Kentucky. But then, you never could tell how tastes run.

"Well, reckon I'll have to be rackin' out home," said he, getting up, tiptoeing to take the cramp out of his legs.

"Yes, and I'll have to be stirrin' the pots to get supper for my boy Joe," she said.

The smoke from her kitchen fire rose white as she put in dry sumac to give it a start. It mounted straight as a plume for a little way, until it met the cool air of evening which was beginning to fall. There it spread, like a floating silken scarf, and settled over the roof. It draped down slowly over the walls, until it enveloped the old home like the benediction of a loving heart.

The sun was descending the ladder of the hills; low now it stood above them, the valley in shadow more than half its breadth, a tender flood of gold upon the slope where the new orchard waved its eager shoots; the blessing of a day was pa.s.sing in the promise of a day to come.

Out of the kitchen came the cheerful sound of batter for the corn bread being beaten in the bowl, and with it Sarah Newbolt's voice in song:

_Near the cross, O Lamb of G.o.d_----

The beating of the batter dimmed the next line. Then it rose to the close----

_Let me walk from day to day, With its shadow o'er me._

The clamp of the oven door was heard, and silence followed.

Sarah was standing on the porch again wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n, looking away toward the fields. The sun was dipping now into the forest cresting the hills; the white rooster was pacing the outside of the wire enclosure from which he had escaped, in frantic search of an opening to admit him to his perch, his proud head all rumpled in his baffled eagerness, his dangling wattles fiery red.

The smoke had found the low places in garden and lawn, where it hovered; a dove wailed from the old orchard, where a pair of them nested year after year; a little child-wind came with soft fingers, and laid them on the waiting woman's hair.

Her face quickened with a smile. Joe was coming home from the field.

Over his shoulder he carried his hoe, and as he came on toward her in yard-long strides his mother thought of the young soldiers she had seen march away to the war, carrying their guns in that same free confidence of careless strength. His hat was pushed back from his forehead, the collar of his blue flannel s.h.i.+rt was open. His boyish suspenders had been put away in favor of a belt, which was tight-drawn about his slim waist.

Very trim and strong, and confident he looked, with the glow of youth in his cheeks, and the spark of happiness in his gray eyes. He was well set in the form of a man now, the months since his imprisonment having brought him much to fasten upon and hold.

Joe made the same great splas.h.i.+ng that he had made on that spring evening of a year gone by, when he came home from work to step into the shadow which so quickly grew into a storm. But there was no shadow ahead of him this night; there was no somber thing to bend down the high serenity of his happy heart.

He stood before the gla.s.s hung above the wash bench and smoothed his hair. Mrs. Newbolt was standing by the stove, one of the lids partly removed, some white thing in her hand which she seemed hesitating over consigning to the flames.

"What've you got there, Mother?" he asked cheerily as he turned to take his place at the waiting table.

"Laws," said she, in some perturbation, her face flushed, holding the thing in her hand up to his better view, "it's that old paper I got from Isom when I--a year ago! I mislaid it when the men was paintin' and plasterin', and I just now run across it stuck back of the coffee jar."

For a moment Joe stood behind her, silently, looking over her shoulder at the signature of Isom Chase.

"It's no use now," said she, her humiliation over being confronted with this reminder of her past perfidy against her beloved boy almost overwhelming her. "We might as well put it in the stove and git it out of sight."

Joe looked at her with a smile, his face still solemn and serious for all its youth and the fires of new-lit hope behind his eyes. He laid his hand upon her shoulder a.s.suringly, and closed the stove.

"Give it to me, Mother," said he, reaching out his hand.

She placed the bond of his transference to Isom Chase in it, and those old heart-wrung tears of hers, which had been dry upon her cheeks now for many a happy day, welled, and flowed down silently.

Joe folded the paper.

"I'll keep it, Mother," said he, "so that it will stand as a reminder to me in prosperity that I was once poor and in bondage; and in my happiness that it may tell me of the days when I was forsaken and in prison, with only my mother's faithful hand to comfort me.

"I'll put it away and keep it, Mother, lest in my prosperity some day I may forget the Lord; forget that He giveth, and that He taketh away, also; that His hand chastiseth in the same measure that it bestows blessings upon us. I'll leave it up here, Mother, on the old shelf; right where I can see it every time I take down the Book."

W. B. C.