And the future was clouded to Joe Newbolt now, like a window-pane with frost upon it, where all had been so clear in his calculations but a day before. In his heart he feared the ordeal for Isom Chase was a man of evil repute.
Long ago Chase's first wife had died, without issue, cursed to her grave because she had borne him no sons to labor in his fields. Lately he had married another, a woman of twenty, although he was well along the road to sixty-five himself. His second wife was a stranger in that community, the daughter of a farmer named Harrison, who dwelt beyond the county-seat.
Chase's homestead was a place pleasant enough for the abode of happiness, in spite of its grim history and sordid reputation. The mark of thrift was about it, orchards bloomed upon its fair slopes, its hedges graced the highways like cool, green walls, not a leaf in excess upon them, not a protruding bramble. How Isom Chase got all the work done was a matter of unceasing wonder, for nothing tumbled to ruin there, nothing went to waste. The secret of it was, perhaps, that when Chase _did_ hire a man he got three times as much work out of him as a laborer ordinarily performed.
There were stories abroad that Chase was as hard and cruel to his young wife as he had been to his old, but there was no better warrant for them than his general reputation. It was the custom in those days for a woman to suffer greater indignities and cruelties than now without public complaint. There never had been a separation of man and wife in that community, there never had been a suit for divorce. Doubtless there were as many unhappy women to the square mile there as in other places, but custom ruled that they must conceal their sorrows in their breasts.
To all of these things concerning Isom Chase, Joe Newbolt was no stranger. He knew, very well indeed, the life that lay ahead of him as the bondboy of that old man as he went forward along the dew-moist road that morning.
Early as it was, Isom Chase had been out of bed two hours or more when Joe arrived. The scents of frying food came out of the kitchen, and Isom himself was making a splash in a basin of water--one thing that he could afford to be liberal with three times a day--on the porch near the open door.