He exhibited a watch, for which Wycliff thought he could safely pay that amount, and he handed Joe the money.
“Thank,� said Joe, as he stepped over the threshold, “Me fix old Sharp.�
“Don’t hurt Mr. Sharp,� Wycliff cautioned him. “Mr. Sharp has a good wife, and good children. Besides, you would go to prison.�
The tone of his visitor changed. He seemed to realize that he had blundered in making the threat.
“Me no hurt Mr. Sharp,� he finally promised, and then he went out into the darkness.
“Don’t lose your money,� was Wycliff’s parting advice.
When he was out in the night again, Joe’s anger kindled anew, as he remembered the farm-superintendent’s injustice. Although Wycliff’s warning prevented him from doing Sharp bodily harm, he was still bent on revenge. Revenge was still the uppermost idea in Half-Witted Joe’s unbalanced mind, as he approached Beauna Vista, and the dark night had its strong influence upon his thought and purpose.
He glanced in at the farm-house windows. The family and the farm-hands were busy reading. Mr. Sharp, he knew, had gone to a public meeting. The coast was clear. He stole around to the side of the barn farthest from the house. He went through an unused stable, to where the lower part of a great mow of hay was exposed.
There was the flash of a match, the sudden darting upward of the flames on the edge of the hay-mow, and then Joe hurried out through the yard, across the meadow, and reaching the railroad track, followed it to the edge of a piece of woods.
Here he halted, cowering in some bushes, and looked. He saw the light gleam from the big barn-doors, saw the flames break through the roof, saw the inmates of the house rush out, and heard the alarm sounded from farm-house to farm-house. Soon a neighboring farmer rushed past Joe, on his way to the fire, and as the flames now lit up the landscape all around, Joe realized that he might be discovered, and passed on. But while he looked, he feasted his eyes as greedily as a former savage might have done, on the destruction of a pioneer home.