"No matter, Mother."
"And Ollie said if she ever did come into Isom"s property she"d make us a deed to our place."
Mrs. Newbolt"s face bore a little gleam of hope when she told him this.
Joe looked at her kindly.
"She could afford to, Mother," said he, "it was paid for in interest on that loan to Isom."
"But Isom, he never would "a" give in to that," said she. "Your pap he paid twelve per cent interest on that loan for sixteen years."
"I figured it all up, Mother," said he.
There was nothing for her to sit on in the corridor; she stood holding to the bars to take some of the weight from her tired feet.
"I don"t want to hurry you off, Mother," said Joe, "but I hate to see you standing there all tired out. If the sheriff was a gentleman he"d fetch you a chair. I don"t suppose there"d be any use in asking him."
"Never mind, Joe, it takes more than a little walk like that to play me out."
"You"d better stop in at Colonel Price"s and rest a while before you start back," he suggested.
"Maybe I will," said she.
She plunged her hand into the black draw-string bag which she carried on her arm, rummaging among its contents.
"That little rambo tree you planted a couple of years ago had two apples on it," she told him, "but I never noticed "em all summer, the leaves was so thick and it was such a little feller, anyhow."
"It is a little one to begin bearing," said Joe, with a boy"s interest in a thing that he has done with his own hand turning out to be something.
"Yes; and I aimed to leave them on the tree till you could see them, but the hard wind yesterday shook "em off. Here they are, I"ve fetched "em to you, son."
Joe took the apples, the recollection of the high hopes which he had centered around that little apple-tree when he planted it coming back to him like a scented wind at dawn. He had planned to make that tree the nucleus of an orchard, which was to grow and spread until it covered the old home place, the fields adjoining, and lifted the curse of poverty from the Newbolt name. It had been a boyish plan which his bondage to Isom Chase had set back.
He had not given it up for a day while he labored in Chase"s fields.
When he became his own man he always intended to take it up and put it through. Now, there in his hand, was the first fruit of his big intention, and in that moment Joe reviewed his old pleasant dream.
He saw again as he had pictured it before, to the relief of many a long, hot day in Isom"s fields, his thousand trees upon the hills, the laden wagons rolling to the station with his barrels of fruit, some of it to go to far lands across the sea. He saw again the stately house with its white columns and deep porticoes, in the halls of which his fancy had reveled many a happy hour, and he saw--the bars of his stone cell and his mother"s work-hardened hands clasping them, while she looked at him with the pain of her sad heart speaking from her eyes. A heavy tear rolled down his hollow cheek and fell upon the apples in his hand.
For the pain of prison he had not wept, nor for its shame. The vexing circ.u.mstance of being misunderstood, the dread threat of the future had not claimed a tear. But for a dream which had sprung like a sweet flower in his young heart and had pa.s.sed away like a mist, he wept.
His mother knew nothing about that blasted dream; the gloom of his cell concealed his tears. He rubbed the fruit along his coat sleeve, as if to make it shine, as a fruiterer polishes the apples in his stall.
"All right, Mother, I"m glad you brought them," he said, although there was no gladness in his voice.
"I planned to fetch you in some fried chicken today, too," said she, "but the pesky rooster I had under the tub got away when I went to take him out. If you"d like some, Joe, I"ll come back tomorrow."
"No, no; don"t you tramp over here tomorrow, Mother," he admonished, "and don"t bother about the chicken. I don"t seem to have any appet.i.te any more. But you wait till I"m out of here a day or two; then you"ll see me eat."
"Well, then I guess I"ll be goin" on back, Joe; and bright and early Monday morning I"ll be on hand at the court. Maybe we"ll be able to go home together that evenin", son."
"Hammer says it will take two or three days," Joe told her, "but I don"t see what they can do to make it string out that long. I could tell them all about it in ten minutes. So we mustn"t put our hopes too high on Monday, Mother."
"I"ll beseech the Lord all day tomorrow, son, to open their ears that they may hear," said she solemnly. "And when the time comes to speak tell it all, Joe, tell it all!"
"Yes, Mother, when the time comes," said he gently.
"Tell "em all Isom said to you, son," she charged.
"Don"t you worry over that now, Mother."
She felt that her son drew away from her, in his haughty manner of self-sufficiency, as he spoke. She sighed, shaking her head sadly.
"Well, I"ll be rackin" off home," she said.
"If you stop at the colonel"s to rest a while, Mother--and I wish you would, for you"re all tired out--you might hand this book back to Miss Price. She loaned it to me. Tell her I read it long ago, and I"d have sent it back before now, only I thought she might come after it herself some time."
His mother turned to him, a curious expression in her face.
"Don"t she come any more, Joe?"
"She"s been busy with other things, I guess," said he.
"Maybe," she allowed, with a feeling of resentment against the book on account of its cold, unfriendly owner.
She had almost reached the corridor gate when Joe called after her.
"No, don"t tell her that," he requested. "Don"t tell her anything. Just hand it back, please, Mother."
"Whatever you say, Joe."
Joe heard the steel gate close after her and the sheriff"s voice loud above his mother"s as they went toward the door.
Loyal as he was to his mother, the thought of her went out with her, and in her place stood the slender figure of youth, her lips "like a thread of scarlet." One day more to wait for the event of his justification and vindication, or at least the beginning of it, thought Joe.
Ah, if Alice only would come to lighten the interval!
CHAPTER XV
THE STATE _VS._ NEWBOLT
The court-house at Shelbyville was a red brick structure with long windows. From the joints of its walls the mortar was falling. It lay all around the building in a girdle of gray, like an encircling ant-hill, upon the green lawn. Splendid sugar-maples grew all about the square, in the center of which the court-house stood, and close around the building.
In a corner of the plaza, beneath the largest and oldest of these spreading trees, stood a rotting block of wood, a section of a giant tree-trunk, around which centered many of the traditions of the place.
It was the block upon which negro slaves had been auctioned in the fine old days before the war.
There was a bench beside the approach to the main door, made from one of the logs of the original court-house, built in that square more than sixty years before the day that Joe Newbolt stood to answer for the murder of Isom Chase. The old men of the place sat there in the summer days, whittling and chewing tobacco and living over again the stirring incidents of their picturesque past. Their mighty initials were cut in the tough wood of the bench, to endure long after them and recall memories of the hands which carved them so strong and deep.