“The law don't give you these; it mebbe gives you me, but these is mine.”
She flung by him, and he heard the barn door rattle back. He put on his coat and went miserably after her, “M'ri, here's yer shawl, you'll git yer death.” The barn lit by the lantern revealed two astonished oxen, a mild-eyed cow, a line of hens roosting on an old hayrack and Maria rubbing the frozen sides of the white horse. “Put yer shawl on, M'ri, you'll git yer death.”
“An' you'd lose my work, eh? Leave me, I say, I'm burning up; I never will be cold till I'm dead. I can die! there is death 'lowed us poor critters, an' coffins to pay fur, and grave lots.”
Silas picked up a piece of flannel and began to rub the horse. In ghastly quiet the two worked, the man patching the woman, and looking timorously at the axe in the corner. One woman in the neighborhood, living on a cross-road where no one ever came, had gone mad and jnur-dered her husband, but “M'ri” had always been so clear-headed! Then the woman went and began piling hay in the empty stall.
“You ain't goin' to use thet good hay fur beddin,' be ye, M'ri?” asked Silas in pathetic anxiety.
“I tell you let me be. Who has a better right to this? His labor cut it and hauled it; this is a time when the laborer shall git his hire.”
Silas went on rubbing, listening in painful silence to the click of the lock on the grain bin, and the swish of oats being poured into a trough.
“Don't give him too much, M'ri,” he pleaded humbly, “I don't mean ter be savin', but he'll eat hisself to death.”
“The first that ever did on this place,” laughed the woman wildly.
Then standing on the milking-stool she piled the blankets on the grateful horse, then led him to the stall where she stood and watched him eat. “I never see you so free 'round a hoss afore,” said Silas; “you used to be skeered of 'em, he might kick ye.”