“It is a little one to begin bearing,” said Joe, with a boy’s interest in a thing that he has done with his own hand turning out to be something.
“Yes; and I aimed to leave them on the tree till you could see them, but the hard wind yesterday shook ’em off. Here they are, I’ve fetched ’em to you, son.”
Joe took the apples, the recollection of the high hopes which he had centered around that little apple-tree when he planted it coming back to him like a scented wind at dawn. He had planned to make that tree the nucleus of an orchard, which was to grow and spread until it covered the old home place, the fields adjoining, and lifted the curse of poverty from the Newbolt name. It had been a boyish plan which his bondage to Isom Chase had set back.
He had not given it up for a day while he labored in Chase’s fields. When he became his own man he always intended to take it up and put it through. Now, there in his hand, was the first fruit of his big intention, and in that moment Joe reviewed his old pleasant dream.
He saw again as he had pictured it before, to the relief of 239 many a long, hot day in Isom’s fields, his thousand trees upon the hills, the laden wagons rolling to the station with his barrels of fruit, some of it to go to far lands across the sea. He saw again the stately house with its white columns and deep porticoes, in the halls of which his fancy had reveled many a happy hour, and he saw–the bars of his stone cell and his mother’s work-hardened hands clasping them, while she looked at him with the pain of her sad heart speaking from her eyes. A heavy tear rolled down his hollow cheek and fell upon the apples in his hand.
For the pain of prison he had not wept, nor for its shame. The vexing circumstance of being misunderstood, the dread threat of the future had not claimed a tear. But for a dream which had sprung like a sweet flower in his young heart and had passed away like a mist, he wept.
His mother knew nothing about that blasted dream; the gloom of his cell concealed his tears. He rubbed the fruit along his coat sleeve, as if to make it shine, as a fruiterer polishes the apples in his stall.
“All right, Mother, I’m glad you brought them,” he said, although there was no gladness in his voice.
“I planned to fetch you in some fried chicken today, too,” said she, “but the pesky rooster I had under the tub got away when I went to take him out. If you’d like some, Joe, I’ll come back tomorrow.”
“No, no; don’t you tramp over here tomorrow, Mother,” he admonished, “and don’t bother about the chicken. I don’t seem to have any appetite any more. But you wait till I’m out of here a day or two; then you’ll see me eat.”