BOUT a week after the events recorded in the preceding chapter, old man Bishop, just at dusk one evening, rode up to Pole Baker's humble domicile.

Pole was in the front yard making a fire of sticks, twigs, and chips.

“What's that fer?” the old man questioned, as he dismounted and hitched his horse to the worm fence.

“To drive off mosquitoes,” said Pole, wiping his eyes, which were red from the effects of the smoke. “I 'll never pass another night like the last un ef I kin he'p it. I 'lowed my hide was thick, but they bored fer oil all over me from dark till sun-up. I never 've tried smoke, but Hank Watts says it's ahead o' pennyr'yal.”

“Shucks!” grunted the planter, “you ain't workin' it right. A few rags burnin' in a pan nigh yore bed may drive 'em out, but a smoke out heer in the yard 'll jest drive 'em in.”

“What?” said Pole, in high disgust. “Do you expect me to sleep sech hot weather as this is with a fire nigh my bed? The durn things may eat me raw, but I 'll be blamed ef I barbecue myse'f to please 'em.”

Mrs. Baker appeared in the cabin-door, holding two of the youngest children by their hands. “He won't take my advice, Mr. Bishop,” she said. “I jest rub a little lamp-oil on my face an' hands an' they don't tetch me.” Pole grunted and looked with laughing eyes at the old man.

“She axed me t'other night why I'd quit kissin' 'er,” he said. “An' I told 'er I didn't keer any more fer kerosene than the mosquitoes did.”

Mrs. Baker laughed pleasantly, as she brought out a chair for Bishop and invited him to sit down. He complied, twirling his riding-switch in his hand. From his position, almost on a level with the floor, he could see the interior of one of the rooms. It was almost bare of furniture. Two opposite corners were occupied by crude bedsteads; in the centre of the room was a cradle made from a soap-box on rockers sawn from rough poplar boards. It had the appearance of having been in use through several generations. Near it stood a spinning-wheel and a three-legged stool. The sharp steel spindle gleamed in the firelight from the big log and mud chimney.

“What's the news from town, Mr. Bishop?” Pole asked, awkwardly, for it struck him that Bishop had called to talk with him about some business and was reluctant to introduce it.

“Nothin' that interests any of us, I reckon, Pole,” said the old man, “except I made that investment in Shoal Cotton Factory stock.”

“That's good,” said Pole, in the tone of anybody but a man who had never invested a dollar in anything. “It's all hunkey, an' my opinion is that it 'll never be wuth less.”

“I did heer, too,” added Bishop, “that it was reported that Craig had set up a little grocery store out in Texas, nigh the Indian Territory. Some thinks that Winship 'll turn up thar an' jine 'im, but a body never knows what to believe these days.”

“That shore is a fact,” opined Pole. “Sally, that corn-bread's a-burnin'; ef you'd use less lamp-oil you'd smell better.”

Mrs. Baker darted to the fireplace, raked the live coals from beneath the cast-iron oven, and jerked off the lid in a cloud of steam and smoke. She turned over the pone with the aid of a case-knife, and then came back to the door.

“Fer the last month I've had my eye on the Bascome farm,” Bishop was saying. “Thar's a hundred acres even, some good bottom land and upland, an' in the neighborhood o' thirty acres o' good wood. Then thar's a five-room house, well made an' tight, an' a barn, cow-house, an' stable.”

“Lord! I know the place like a book,” said Pole; “an' it's a dandy investment, Mr. Bishop. They say he offered it fer fifteen hundred. It's wuth two thousand. You won't drap any money by buyin' that property, Mr. Bishop. I'd hate to contract to build jest the house an' well an' out-houses fer a thousand.”

“I bought it,” Bishop told him. “He let me have it fer a good deal less 'n fifteen hundred, cash down.”

“Well, you made a dandy trade, Mr. Bishop. Ah, that's what ready money will do. When you got the cash things seem to come at bottom figures.”

Old Bishop drew a folded paper from his pocket and slapped it on his knee. “Yes, I closed the deal this evenin', an' I was jest a-thinkin' that as you hain't rented fer next yeer—I mean—” Bishop was ordinarily direct of speech, but somehow his words became tangled, and he delivered himself awkwardly on this occasion. “You see, Alan thinks that you 'n Sally ort to live in a better house than jest this heer log-cabin, an'—”

The wan face of the tired woman was aglow with expectation. She sank down on the doorstep, and sat still and mute, her hands clasping each other in her lap. She had always disliked that cabin and its sordid surroundings, and there was something in Bishop's talk that made her think he was about to propose renting the new farm, house and all, to her husband. Her mouth fell open; she scarcely allowed herself to breathe. Then, as Bishop paused, her husband's voice struck dumb dismay to her heart. It was as if she were falling from glowing hope back to tasted despair.

“Thar's more land in that farm an' I could do jestice to, Mr. Bishop; but ef thar's a good cabin on it an' you see fit to cut off enough fer me'n one hoss I'd jest as soon tend that as this heer. I want to do what you an' Alan think is best all'round.”

“Oh, Pole, Pole!” The woman was crying it to herself, her face lowered to her hands that the two men might not see the agony written in her eyes. A house like that to live in, with all those rooms and fireplaces, and windows with panes of glass in them! She fancied she saw her children playing on the tight, smooth floors and on the honeysuckled porch. For one minute these things had been hers, to be snatched away by the callous indifference of her husband, who, alas! had never cared a straw for appearances.

“Oh, I wasn't thinking about rentin'' it to you,” said Bishop, and the woman's dream was over. She raised her head, awake again. “You see,” went on Bishop, still struggling for proper expression, “Alan thinks—well, he thinks you are sech a born fool about not acceptin' help from them that feels nigh to you, an' I may as well say grateful, exceedingly grateful, fer what you've done, things that no other livin' man could 'a' done. Alan thinks you ort to have the farm fer yore own property, an' so the deeds has been made out to—”

Pole drew himself up to his full height. His big face was flushed, half with anger, half with a strong emotion of a tenderer kind. He stood towering over the old man like a giant swayed by the warring winds of good and evil, “I won't heer a word more of that, Mr. Bishop,” he said, with a quivering lip; “not a word more. By golly! I mean what I say. I don't want to heer another word of it. This heer place is good enough fer me an' my family. It's done eight yeer, an' it kin do another eight.”

“Oh, Pole, Pole, Pole!” The woman's cry was now audible. It came straight from her pent-up, starving soul and went right to Bishop's heart.

“You want the place, don't you, Sally?” he said, calling her by her given name for the first time, as if he had just discovered their kinship. He could not have used a tenderer tone to child of his own.

“Mind, mind what you say, Sally!” ordered Pole, from the depths of his fighting emotions. “Mind what you say!”

The woman looked at Bishop. Her glance was on fire.

“Yes, I want it—I want it!” she cried. “I ain't goin' to lie. I want it more right now than I do the kingdom of heaven. I want it ef we have a right to it. Oh, I don't know.” She dropped her head in her lap and began to sob.

Bishop stood up. He moved towards her in a jerky fashion and laid his hand on the pitifully tight knot of hair at the back of her head.

“Well, it's yores,” he said. “Alan thought Pole would raise a kick agin it, an' me'n him had it made out in yore name, so he couldn't tetch it. It's yores, Sally Ann Baker. That's the way it reads.”

The woman's sobs increased, but they were sobs of unbridled joy. With her apron to her eyes she rose and hurried into the house.

The eyes of the two men met. Bishop spoke first:

“You've got to give in, Pole,” he said. “You'd not be a man to stand betwixt yore wife an' a thing she wants as bad as she does that place, an', by all that's good an' holy, you sha 'n' t.”

“What's the use o' me tryin' to git even with Alan,” Pole exclaimed, “ef he's eternally a-goin' to git up some 'n'? I've been tickled to death ever since I cornered old Craig till now, but you an' him has sp'iled it all by this heer trick. It ain't fair to me.”

“Well, it's done,” smiled the old man, as he went to his horse; “an' ef you don't live thar with Sally, I 'll make 'er git a divorce.”

Bishop had reached a little pig-pen in a fence-corner farther along, on his way home, when Mrs. Baker suddenly emerged from a patch of high corn in front of him.

“Is he a-goin' to take it, Mr. Bishop?” she asked, panting from her hurried walk through the corn that hid her from the view of the cabin.

“Yes,” Bishop told her; “I'm a-goin' to send two wagons over in the morning to move yore things. I wish it was ten times as good a place as it is, but it will insure you an' the children a living an' a comfortable home.”

After the manner of many of her kind, the woman uttered no words of thanks, but simply turned back into the corn, and, occupied with her own vision of prosperity and choking with gratitude, she hurried back to the cabin.