The woman looked at Bishop. Her glance was on fire.
“Yes, I want it—I want it!” she cried. “I ain't goin' to lie. I want it more right now than I do the kingdom of heaven. I want it ef we have a right to it. Oh, I don't know.” She dropped her head in her lap and began to sob.
Bishop stood up. He moved towards her in a jerky fashion and laid his hand on the pitifully tight knot of hair at the back of her head.
“Well, it's yores,” he said. “Alan thought Pole would raise a kick agin it, an' me'n him had it made out in yore name, so he couldn't tetch it. It's yores, Sally Ann Baker. That's the way it reads.”
The woman's sobs increased, but they were sobs of unbridled joy. With her apron to her eyes she rose and hurried into the house.
The eyes of the two men met. Bishop spoke first:
“You've got to give in, Pole,” he said. “You'd not be a man to stand betwixt yore wife an' a thing she wants as bad as she does that place, an', by all that's good an' holy, you sha 'n' t.”
“What's the use o' me tryin' to git even with Alan,” Pole exclaimed, “ef he's eternally a-goin' to git up some 'n'? I've been tickled to death ever since I cornered old Craig till now, but you an' him has sp'iled it all by this heer trick. It ain't fair to me.”
“Well, it's done,” smiled the old man, as he went to his horse; “an' ef you don't live thar with Sally, I 'll make 'er git a divorce.”
Bishop had reached a little pig-pen in a fence-corner farther along, on his way home, when Mrs. Baker suddenly emerged from a patch of high corn in front of him.