JANE I want you to do as I say. BEN (_after a look at Jim and the handcuffs_) I’ll do it. JANE I thought so. (_She turns to Judge_) Can you fix the bond up here? JUDGE Yes. (_He sits at table and takes pen, ink and paper from a drawer_) I can hold court right here long enough for that. JIM This is my prisoner, Judge, and here’s the warrant. [_He puts warrant on table._ JANE First he’s got to swear, before you, to my conditions. BEN What conditions? JANE When will his trial be, Judge? JUDGE Not before the spring term, I should think--say early April. JANE You’ll stay here till then, Ben; you won’t leave town! You’ll work the farm,--there’s plenty to be done. BEN (_sulkily_) I don’t know how to work a farm. JANE I do. You’ll just do what I tell you. BEN Be your slave? That’s what you mean, ain’t it? JANE I’ve been about that here for eight years. BEN And now it’s your turn to get square on a Jordan! JANE You’ll work for once, and work every day. The first day you don’t I’ll surrender you to the judge, and he’ll jail you. The rest of the Jordans will live as I tell them to live, or for the first time in any of their lives, they’ll live on what they earn. Don’t forget, Ben, that right now I’m the head of the family. JUDGE (_to Ben_) You heard the conditions? Shall I make out the bond? BEN (_reluctantly_) Yes. [_He sits moodily at right, looking down at the floor. Jane looks at him for a moment, then turns up to window._ JANE It’s snowing! JIM Thought I smelled it. (_He buttons his coat_) Well, nothin’ to keep me, is there, Judge? JUDGE No. (_He starts to write out the bond with a rusty pen_) This pen is rusty! JIM I was sorry to hear about the old lady. It’s too bad, but that’s the way of things. JUDGE (_writes_) Yes. JIM Well--It’s early for snow, not but what it’s a good thing for the winter wheat. [_He exits._ CURTAIN ACT TWO _Scene: Sitting room of the Jordan homestead some two months later._ _This room also shows some traces of a family’s daily life, and to that extent is less desolate than the “parlor” of the first act, although the stern faith of the Puritan makes no concession to the thing we have learned to call “good taste.” The old-fashioned simplicity seen in such a room as this has resulted from poverty, both of mind and of purse, and has nothing akin to the simplicity of the artist; as a matter of fact, your true descendant of the settlers of 1605 would be the first to resent such an implication; to them the arts are directly connected with heathen practices, and any incense burned before the altars of the Graces still smells to them of brimstone._