“Oh, I wasn't thinking about _rentin'_ it to you,” said Bishop, and the woman's dream was over. She raised her head, awake again. “You see,” went on Bishop, still struggling for proper expression, “Alan thinks--well, he thinks you are sech a born fool about not acceptin' help from them that feels nigh to you, an' I may as well say grateful, exceedingly grateful, fer what you've done, things that no other livin' man could 'a' done. Alan thinks you ort to have the farm fer yore own property, an' so the deeds has been made out to--” Pole drew himself up to his full height. His big face was flushed, half with anger, half with a strong emotion of a tenderer kind. He stood towering over the old man like a giant swayed by the warring winds of good and evil, “I won't heer a word more of that, Mr. Bishop,” he said, with a quivering lip; “not a word more. By golly! I mean what I say. I don't want to heer another word of it. This heer place is good enough fer me an' my family. It's done eight yeer, an' it kin do another eight.” “Oh, Pole, Pole, _Pole!_” The woman's cry was now audible. It came straight from her pent-up, starving soul and went right to Bishop's heart. “You want the place, don't you, Sally?” he said, calling her by her given name for the first time, as if he had just discovered their kinship. He could not have used a tenderer tone to child of his own. “Mind, mind what you say, Sally!” ordered Pole, from the depths of his fighting emotions. “Mind what you say!” 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.”