His wife was very stirring.
He was in great distress, and in view of his misfortune I forgave him the debt and urged him to work his crop this year. He promised renewed effort and I hoped anew. About midsummer he came to me in terrible trouble. His boy had been arrested and put in jail. He was a boy of about 18 years; his son, but not his wife's; but she in the kindness of her heart when she heard that the child was neglected and starving, took him when 2 years old and cared for him as her own, and had brought him up more carefully than most. The boy had hired a bicycle in Conway, fifteen miles distant, for three days, and had come to visit his father and remained three months. The owners of the wheel had great difficulty in tracing him, but naturally when found they put him in jail.
Punch and Judy, anguish stricken and weeping, came to me for help. I told them the only possible way to help the boy was to let him take the punishment the law decreed. It might save him from being a confirmed thief. All in vain I talked; they pleaded with me, weeping, to lend them the $15 they needed to get him out. They had neither of them slept in their bed since the news first came; they could not go to bed knowing he was in jail. When I asked where they slept they answered on the floor, without mattress or bedding of any sort, and they looked it. Judy said: "Miss, yo' tink I kin git een my comfutuble high bed en kno' dat chile, my own boy I raise, is punish een jail. No, ma'am, I tell Punch neber will I git een dat bed agin till my boy is save."
Unfortunately I had the money in the house, and I gave it. They had sold one of their cows and got the other $15, and Punch went and paid the $30 and the suit was dropped. No sooner was the boy free than he was arrested again for robbing the post-office, and then their disappointment and distress was so keen that they became silent. Judy only said to me: "Miss, I wash me han' of de boy, now; me heart is broke."
It was pathetic in the extreme. I tried to encourage Punch to do some work and pay me in that way, as he had promised, but in vain. I needed shingles more than ever, but with all my efforts he still owes $10 on this last debt. Now he came to tell me that he was going away. He put it with great delicacy and began by saying, "Miss, I dun'no how 'tis, I kyant please yo'; I try en I try, en somehow I kayn't cum it. Yo' kno', my missis, a man kayn't do mo' dan 'e kin. Man p'int, but God disapp'int."
I could not help laughing at this new version of "L'homme propose, et Dieu dispose." "Oh, Punch," I said, "I think you have got the wrong end of that. I think in this case it is God who points and man who disappoints; but certainly you can go, only you must do something to pay me that $10 before you leave, for I am in need of the money, and I have waited on you as long as I possibly can. I am perfectly willing to take the shingles, and it would not take you long to pay up the debt." It was in vain, unless I had the Sheriff take his cow, which I could not bear to do. He said he would pay it by degrees next year, and I was so glad to have him go, that I gave up the effort to get anything from him.
Day after day I met Judy coming out of her patch.