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They serve up the rice divided into portions for each person, contrary to the practice in the other countries; the tallam being covered with a handsome crimson napkin manufactured for that use. They are wont to entertain strangers with much more profusion than is met with in the rest of the island.
Slip the beastis in on the sly. Pearce Tallam don't feed an' tend ter his critters nohow. I hev hearn ez his boys do that job, so he ain't like ter find it out. On the sly that's the trade." Ike hesitated. Once more the man teetered on one foot, and held out the coin temptingly. But Ike's better instincts came to his aid. "That barn b'longs ter Pearce Tallam.
But the first sound he heard reassured him. It was the clear, metallic resonance of an anvil, the clanking of a sledge, and the clinking of a hand-hammer. Here, at the forge, he found work. It had been said in Poor Valley that he was already as good a blacksmith even as Pearce Tallam. He had great natural aptitude for the work, and considerable experience.
He was a man in strength, and it was hard for him not to return the blow; but he only walked out of the shop, declaring that he would stay for no more blows. "Cl'ar out, then!" called out Pearce Tallam after him. "I don't keer ef ye goes fur good." He met, at the door of the dwelling, a plaintive reproach from his mother.
But must he relinquish his hopes, his chance of an education, that plucky race for which he was entered to overtake the world that had a hundred years the start of him, and be forever a nameless, futureless clod in Poor Valley? His mother had the son she had chosen. And surely he owed no duty to Pearce Tallam. The hand that was gone had been a hard hand to him. He rose at length.
Even then he experienced a sort of satisfaction in knowing that Pearce Tallam must feel humiliated and of small account to be thus utterly dependent for his bread upon the boy whom he had so persistently maltreated. In his pale face Ike saw something of the bitterness he had endured, of his broken spirit, of his humbled pride. The look smote upon the boy's heart. There was another inward struggle.
This was all of value that the old man had left; for the deserted log hut, rotting on another bleak waste farther down in Poor Valley, was worth only a sigh for the home that it once was, worth, too, perhaps, the thanks of those it sheltered now, the rat and the owl. The mare had worked for Pearce Tallam in the plough, under the saddle, and in the wagon all the years since.
As he shouldered his gun and strode out, he noted the light of the forge-fire quivering on the mist, but he little thought it was the last fire that Pearce Tallam would ever kindle there. He glanced back again before the dense vapor shut the house from view. His mother was standing in the door, with her baby in her arms, looking after him with a frightened, beseeching face.
He divined it from the anxious, furtive glances which they one and all cast upon him from time to time, even Pearce Tallam, whose turn it was now to feel that greatest anguish of calamity, helplessness.
He had a sense of elation and achievement when he gained the top, and it followed him home. There it suddenly deserted him. He found Pearce Tallam in a frenzy of rage at the discovery, which he had made through Jube's confession, that a stolen horse had been stabled on his premises. Despite his tyranny and his fierce, rude temper, he was an honest man and of fair repute.
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