"Joe, he'll be along home from his work about dusk," said she, "and we could let you know tomorrow."
"Tomorrow," said Isom Chase, rising stiffly, "I'll have to send the sheriff here with the papers. Tomorrow, ma'am, will be too late."
That dreadful picture swept across her inner vision once more--the chimney down, the house gone. She saw corn growing over the spot where she sat that moment; she remembered that Isom Chase had plowed up a burying-ground once and seeded it to timothy.
"What will I have to do to bind Joe over to you?" she asked, facing him in sudden resolution.
"We'll git in the buggy," said he, with new friendliness, seeing that he had won, "and drive over to Judge Little's. He can make out the papers in a few minutes, and I'll pay you a month's wages in advance. That will fix you up for groceries and garden seeds and everything, and you'll be as snug and happy as any woman in the county."
In less than two hours the transaction was completed, and Sarah Newbolt was back again in the home upon which she had secured her slipping tenure at the sacrifice of her son's liberty. As she began "stirring the pots for supper," as she called it, she also had time to stir the deep waters of reflection.
She had secured herself from the threat of the county farm, and Joe had been the price; Joe, her last-born, the sole remaining one of the six who had come to her and gone on again into the mists.
She began to fear in her heart when she stood off and viewed the result of her desperate panic, the pangs of which Isom Chase had adroitly magnified. If Joe could work for Isom Chase and thus keep her from the poorhouse, could he not have worked for another, free to come and go as he liked, and with the same security for her?
Chase said that he had not taken a mortgage on sentiment, but he had made capital out of it in the end, trading upon her affection for the old home and its years-long associations. As the gloomy evening deepened and she stood in the door watching for her son's return, she saw through the scheme of Isom Chase. She never would have been thrown on the county with Joe to depend on; the question of his ability to support both of them admitted of no debate.
Joe's industry spoke for that, and that was Isom Chase's reason for wanting him. Isom wanted him because he was strong and trustworthy, honest and faithful. And she had bargained him in selfishness and sold him in cowardice, without a word from him, as she might have sold a cow to pay a pressing debt.