"Now, look a-here, Joe," Isom began, in quite a changed tone, "don't you fly up and leave an old man in the lurch that way." "You know what I said," Joe told him. "I'll give in to you, Joe; I'll give you everything you ask for, and more," yielded Isom, seeing that Joe intended to leave. "I'll put it in writing if you want me to Joe--I'll do anything to keep you, son. You're the only man I ever had on this place I wouldn't rather see goin' than comin'." Isom's word was satisfactory to Joe, and he returned to work. That turned out a day to be remembered in the household of Isom Chase. If he had come into the kitchen at noon with all the hoarded savings of his years and thrown them down before her eyes, Ollie could not have been more surprised and mystified than she was when he appeared from the smokehouse carrying a large ham. After his crafty way in a tight pinch Isom turned necessity into profit by making out that the act was free and voluntary, with the pleasure and comfort of his pretty little wife underlying and prompting it all. He grinned as if he would break his beard when he put the ham down on the table and cut it in two at the middle joint as deftly as a butcher. "I've been savin' that ham up for you, Ollie. I think it's just about right now," said he. "That was nice of you, Isom," said she, moved out of her settled taciturnity by his little show of thought for her, "I've been just dying for a piece of ham!" "Well, fry us a big skilletful of it, and some eggs along with it, and fetch up a crock of sweet milk, and stir it up cream and all," directed Isom. Poor Ollie, overwhelmed by the suddenness and freedom of this generosity, stood staring at him, her eyes round, her lips open. Isom could not have studied a more astounding surprise. If he had hung diamonds on her neck, rubies on her wrists, and garnets in her hair, she could quicker have found her tongue. "It's all right, Ollie, it's all right," said Isom pettishly. "We're going to have these things from now on. Might as well eat 'em, and git some of the good of what we produce, as let them city people fatten off 'em." Isom went out with that, and Ollie attacked the ham with the butcher knife in a most savage and barbarous fashion. Isom's old wife must have shifted in her grave at sight of the prodigal repast which Ollie soon spread on the kitchen table. Granting, of course, that people in their graves are cognizant of such things, which, according to this old standard of comparison in human amazement, they must be. But whether the old wife turned over or lay quiescent in the place where they put her when they folded her tired old hands upon her shrunken breast, it is indisputable that the new one eased the pangs of many a hungry day in that bountiful meal. And Joe's face glowed from the fires of it, and his eyes sparkled in the satisfaction of his long-abused stomach.