All the rest of that afternoon the convict toiled in the smoke-house, hanging the meat on hooks along the joists over a slow, partly smothered fire of chips and pieces of bark. When the work was finished his eyes were red from smoke and brine. He stabled the horse and fed him, and then, realizing that he had nothing more to do, he felt hungry. He wanted to go into the sitting-room and sit down in his old place in the chimney-corner, but a growing appreciation of the extreme delicacy of the situation had taken hold of him. He wandered about the stable-yard in a desultory way, going to the pig-pen, now empty and blood-stained, and to the well-filled corn-crib, but these objects had little claim on his interest. The evening shadows had begun to stalk like dank amphibious monsters over the carpet of turf along the creek-banks, and pencils of light were streaming out of the windows of the family-room. Suddenly his eyes took in the woodpile; he went to it, and picking up the ax, began to cut wood. He was tired, but he felt that he would rather be seen occupied than remaining outside without a visible excuse for so doing. In a few minutes he was joined by Lucinda. “Dick,” she intoned, “you’ve worked enough, the Lord Almighty knows. Come in the house an’ rest ‘fore supper; it’s mighty nigh ready.” He avoided her glance, and shamefacedly touched a big log he had just cut into the proper length for the fireplace. “Cato, the triflin’ scamp, hain’t cut you-uns a single backlog,” he said, in a tone that she had never heard from him. “We hain’t had a decent one sence you went off, Brother Richard,” she returned. “An’ a fire’s no fire without a backlog.” Their eyes met. She saw that he was deeply stirred by her tenderness, and that opened the floodgates of her sympathy. She began to rub her eyes. “Oh, Dick, I’m so miser’ble; ef you an’ Marty don’t quit actin’ like you are I don’t know what I will do.” She saw him make a motion as if he had swallowed something; then he stooped and shouldered the heavy backlog and some smaller sticks. “I ’ll give you-uns one more backlog to set by, anyhow,” he said, huskily. She preceded him into the sitting-room and stood over him while he raked out the hot coals and deposited the log against the back part of the fireplace. Then she turned into the kitchen and approached her sister, who was frying meat in an iron pan on the coals. “Marty,” she said, unsteadily, “ef you begin on Dick I ’ll go off fer good. I can’t stand that.” Mrs. Wakeman folded her stern lips, as if to keep them under check, and shrugged her shoulders. That was all the response she made. Lucinda turned back into the sitting-room, where the dining-table stood. To-night she put three plates on the white cloth; one of them had been Dick’s for years. She put it at the end of the table where he had sat when he was the head of the house. As she did so she caught his shifting glance and smiled.