“Not at first. I’ll own it. I was as keen on as himself for fighting to the last; but, oh! Miss Grace, when the trouble comes inside the door, it is the woman feels it. She must hold up and have a bite for the men folks to eat if her heart is just breaking; and I’m fairly tired of it. I feel I’d be that glad to creep into any hole where we could be quiet, I couldn’t tell you.”
“Where is Amos?” asked her visitor, after a pause.
“Gone to Glenwellan to see the lawyer; now we have sold Tom he has to walk there and back every step of the way. He is spending his all in law, Miss Grace. Shure the very money I got for the hens and the ducks and the other cratures he made me give him, and me saving it for the time when we’ll want it sorely.”
“What does Amos hope to do?” inquired Grace. “What does he expect the lawyers can do for him?”
“That’s beyond me to tell. He wants his rights, and he says he’ll have them.”
“What are his rights?”
“Oh, that’s easy telling; this place he paid the renewal of.”
“I am going away,—” began Grace, with apparent irrelevance.
“So I heard tell,” interpolated Mrs. Scott.
“And before I go I want to put this matter before you clearly, as I see it; as others, wiser and more capable than I, see it also.”