Part 62 (1/2)

Mrs. Newbolt flashed up in a breath.

”Why should anybody wonder, I'd like for you to tell me?” she demanded.

”Joe he's good enough for her, and too good for anybody else in this county! Who else was there for Joe, who else was there for Alice?”

Sol did not attempt to answer. It was beyond him, the way some people figgered, he thought in the back of his mind. There was his own girl, Tilda Bell. He considered her the equal to any Newbolt that ever straddled a horse and rode over from Kentucky. But then, you never could tell how tastes run.

”Well, reckon I'll have to be rackin' out home,” said he, getting up, tiptoeing to take the cramp out of his legs.

”Yes, and I'll have to be stirrin' the pots to get supper for my boy Joe,” she said.

The smoke from her kitchen fire rose white as she put in dry sumac to give it a start. It mounted straight as a plume for a little way, until it met the cool air of evening which was beginning to fall. There it spread, like a floating silken scarf, and settled over the roof. It draped down slowly over the walls, until it enveloped the old home like the benediction of a loving heart.

The sun was descending the ladder of the hills; low now it stood above them, the valley in shadow more than half its breadth, a tender flood of gold upon the slope where the new orchard waved its eager shoots; the blessing of a day was pa.s.sing in the promise of a day to come.

Out of the kitchen came the cheerful sound of batter for the corn bread being beaten in the bowl, and with it Sarah Newbolt's voice in song:

_Near the cross, O Lamb of G.o.d_----

The beating of the batter dimmed the next line. Then it rose to the close----

_Let me walk from day to day, With its shadow o'er me._

The clamp of the oven door was heard, and silence followed.

Sarah was standing on the porch again wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n, looking away toward the fields. The sun was dipping now into the forest cresting the hills; the white rooster was pacing the outside of the wire enclosure from which he had escaped, in frantic search of an opening to admit him to his perch, his proud head all rumpled in his baffled eagerness, his dangling wattles fiery red.

The smoke had found the low places in garden and lawn, where it hovered; a dove wailed from the old orchard, where a pair of them nested year after year; a little child-wind came with soft fingers, and laid them on the waiting woman's hair.

Her face quickened with a smile. Joe was coming home from the field.