“Well, then I guess I’ll be goin’ on back, Joe; and bright and early Monday morning I’ll be on hand at the court. Maybe we’ll be able to go home together that evenin’, son.”
“Hammer says it will take two or three days,” Joe told her, “but I don’t see what they can do to make it string out 240 that long. I could tell them all about it in ten minutes. So we mustn’t put our hopes too high on Monday, Mother.”
“I’ll beseech the Lord all day tomorrow, son, to open their ears that they may hear,” said she solemnly. “And when the time comes to speak tell it all, Joe, tell it all!”
“Yes, Mother, when the time comes,” said he gently.
“Tell ’em all Isom said to you, son,” she charged.
“Don’t you worry over that now, Mother.”
She felt that her son drew away from her, in his haughty manner of self-sufficiency, as he spoke. She sighed, shaking her head sadly. “Well, I’ll be rackin’ off home,” she said.
“If you stop at the colonel’s to rest a while, Mother–and I wish you would, for you’re all tired out–you might hand this book back to Miss Price. She loaned it to me. Tell her I read it long ago, and I’d have sent it back before now, only I thought she might come after it herself some time.”
His mother turned to him, a curious expression in her face.
“Don’t she come any more, Joe?”