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Updated: May 18, 2025
Underfoot was a store-bought carpet, as full of roses as the Elysian Fields, and over by the door lay a round, braided rag mat, into which Isom's old wife had stitched the hunger of her heart and the brine of her lonely tears. The coroner looked up from his little red-leather note-book. "Joe Newbolt, step over here and be sworn," said he.
"My hands were as empty as they are this minute," said Joe, but not without a little color in his cheeks when he remembered how hot and small Ollie's hand had felt within his own. "When did you first see this?" asked the coroner, holding up the sack with the burst corner which had lain on Isom's breast.
"We're going to have these things from now on. Might as well eat 'em, and git some of the good of what we produce, as let them city people fatten off 'em." Isom went out with that, and Ollie attacked the ham with the butcher knife in a 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.
"I tol' him," Crump went on, "thet things was already a-gettin' kind o' frolicsome round hyeh agin; thet the Marcums 'n' Braytons was a-takin' up the ole war, 'n' would be a-plunkin' one 'nother every time they got together, 'n' a-gittin' the whole country in fear 'n' tremblin' now thet Steve Marcum had come back." Steve began to scowl and a vixenish smile hovered at Isom's lips.
Across under Thunderstruck Knob that night the old Stetson mother listened to Isom's story of the fight with ghastly joy in her death-marked face. ALL night the court-house was guarded and on guard. At one corner of the square Rufe Stetson, with a few men, sat on watch in old Sam Day's cabin the fortress of the town, built for such a purpose, and used for it many times before.
And there stood the will in Isom's writing as plain as cow tracks, naming him as administrator. It would all work into his hands at the end, and there were rewards and emoluments for an administrator who understood his business, in that estate. That is true in the case of any executor in the affairs of dead men, or receiver in the muddled business of the living.
There was not so much concern for her in the ultimate disposal of Isom's estate, for she had consoled herself all along, since the discovery of the will, that she would soon be above the need of his miserly scrapings and hoarded revenues of stint.
"I want you to promise me you'll never tell Isom," said she. "I never intended to tell him," he replied. She withdrew her hand from his quickly, and quickly both of them fled to his shoulders. "Stoop down," she coaxed with a seductive, tender pressure of her hands, "and tell me, Joe." Isom's step fell on the porch.
With Isom's will would disappear from the public notice the one testimony of his only tender sentiment, his only human softness; a sentiment and a softness which had been born of a desire and fostered by a dream.
Rome was brooding, with his sullen face in his hands; the old miller was busy with his own thoughts; and the boy turned again to his watch. Jasper did not come. Isom's eyes began to ache from the steady gaze, and now and then he would drop them to the water swirling beneath. A slow wind swayed the overhanging branches at the mouth of the stream, and under them was an eddy.
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