er; the taint of its blight
would wither her heart.

Sarah Newbolt had inherited that dread of publicly confessed poverty and
dependence. It had come down to her through a long line of pioneer
forebears who feared neither hardship, strife nor death, so that it
might come to them without a master and under the free sky. Only the
disgraced, the disowned, the failures, and the broken-minded made an end
in the poorhouse in those vigorous days. It was a disgrace from which a
family never could hope to rise again. There, on the old farm with Peter
she had been poor, as poor as the poorest, but they had been free to
come and go.

"I know I've got the name of being a hard man and a money-grabber and a
driver," said Chase with crabbed bitterness, "but who is it that gives
that reputation to me? People that can't beat me and take advantage of
me and work money out of me by their rascally schemes! I'm not a hard
man by nature--my actions with you prove that, don't they?"

"You've been as kind as a body could expect," she answered. "It's only
right that you should have your money back, and it ain't been your fault
that we couldn't raise it. But we've done the best we could."

"And that best only led you up to the poorhouse door," said he. "I'm
offering you a way to escape it, and spend the rest of your days in the
place you're attached to, but I don't seem to get any thanks for it."

"I am thankful to you for your offer--from the bottom of my heart I'm
thankful, Mr. Chase," she hastened to declare.

"Well, neither of us knows how Joe's going to turn out," said he. "Under
my training he might develop into a good, sober farmer, one that knows
his business and can make it pay. If he does, I promise you I'll give
him a chance on this place to redeem it. I'll put him on it to farm on
shares when he fills out his time under me, my share of the crops to
apply to the debt. Would that be fair?"

"Nobody in this world couldn't say it wasn't generous and fair of you,
and noble and kind, Mr. Chase," she declared, her face showing a little
color, the courage coming back into her eyes.

"Then you'd better take up my offer without any more foolishness," he
advised.

"I'll have to talk it over with Joe," said she.

"He's got nothing to do with it, I tell you," protested Chase, brushing
that phase of it aside with a sweep of his hairy hand. "You, and you
alone, are responsible for him till he's twenty-one, and it's your duty
to keep him