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Apparently he was bored, even worried, by Hammer's pounding attempts to make Isom out a man who deserved something slower and less merciful than a bullet, years before he came to his violent end. Through it all Joe sat looking at Ollie, great pity for her forlorn condition and broken spirit in his honest eyes. She did not meet his glance, not for one wavering second.
He laid his hand upon her shoulder assuringly, 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.
You git away from hyeh. Don't you worry 'bout Isom I'll take keer o' him, 'n' when he gits well, he'll want to come atter ye, 'n' I'll let him go. He couldn't live hyeh without you. But y'u must git away, Rome, 'n' git away mighty quick." With hands clasped behind him, Rome stood and watched the bent figure slowly pick its way around the stony cliff. "I reckon I've got to go.
Aye, Isom Chase was dead. Back there in the still house his limbs were stiffening upon his kitchen floor. Isom Chase was dead on the eve of the most bountiful harvest his lands had yielded him in all his toil-freighted years.
How far would your heroism go, Morgan, if you met her in the street tonight, bespattered with public scorn, bedraggled with public contempt, crushed by the discovery of your mutual sin against that old man, Isom Chase? Would you take her to your heart then, Morgan? Would you be man enough to step out into the storm of scorn, and shoulder your part of the load like a man?"
Newbolt before meeting her son that he make a clean breast of all that took place between himself and Isom Chase before the tragedy. Colonel Price felt that he would be taking an offensive and unwarranted liberty in offering any advice at all on that head.
He did not want to be unjust, for perhaps she did not intend to meet Morgan at all. In addition to this doubt of her intentions, he had the hope that Isom would come very soon. He decided at length that he would go to bed and lie awake until he heard Ollie pass up to her room, when he would slip down again and wait.
She chafed under their chatter, and despised them for their shallow pretense. There was not one of them who had respected Isom in life, but now they sat there, a solemn conclave, great-breasted sucklers of the sons of men, and insisted that she, his unloved, his driven, abused and belabored wife, weep tears for his going, for which, in her heart, she was glad.
If Isom had been kind to her, and given her only a small measure of human sympathy, she would have clung to him, and rested in the shelter of his protection, content against all the world. Isom had spread the thorns for his own feet, in his insensibility to all human need of gentleness. Joe even doubted, knowing him as he did, whether the gray old miser was capable of either jealousy or shame.
He nodded encouragingly and smiled. "Do you recall the morning after your arrival at the home of Isom Chase to begin your service there, when you threatened to kill him?" asked the prosecutor. "I do recall that morning," admitted Joe; "but I don't feel that it's fair to hold me to account for words spoken in sudden anger and under trying circumstances.
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