The vicarious responsibility rested on him with serious weight. Knowing what he knew, and seeing what he saw, should he allow things to proceed as they had been going? Would he be true to the trust that Isom had placed in him with his parting word in standing aside and knowingly permitting this man to slip in and poison the heart of Isom's wife? She was lonely and oppressed, and hungry for kind words, but it was not this stranger's office to make green the barrenness of her life. He was there, the bondboy, responsible to his master for his acts. She might come to him for sympathy, and go away with honor. But with this other, this man whose pale eyes shifted and darted like a botfly around a horse's ear, could she drink his counsel and remain undefiled? Joe thought it up and down as he worked in the field near the house that morning, and his face grew hot and his eyes grew fevered, and his resentment against Morgan rose in his throat. He watched to see the man drive away on his canvassing round, but the sun passed nine o'clock and he did not go. He had no right there, alone in the house with that woman, putting, who could say, what evil into her heart. Ten o'clock and the agent's buggy had not left the barn. Joe could contain himself no longer. He was at work in a little stony piece of late clover, so rough he did not like to risk the mower in it. For three hours he had been laying the tumbled swaths in winding tracks across the field, and he had a very good excuse for going to the well, indeed. Coupled with that was the need of a whet-rock, and behind it all the justification of his position. He was there in his master's place; he must watch and guard the honor of his house. Joe could not set out on that little trip without a good deal of moral cudgeling when it came to the point, although he threw down his scythe with a muttered curse on his lips for the man who was playing such an underhanded game. It was on Ollie's account he hesitated. Ollie would think that he suspected her, when there was nothing farther from his mind. It was Morgan who would set the snare for her to trip into, and it was Morgan that he was going to send about his business. But Ollie might take offense and turn against him, and make it as unpleasant as she had shown that she could make it agreeable. But duty was stronger than friendship. It was stern and implacable, and there was no pleasant road to take around it and come out with honor at the other end. Joe made as much noise as he could with his big feet--and that was no inconsiderable amount--as he approached the house. But near the building the grass was long, and soft underfoot, and it bore Joe around to the kitchen window silently. His lips were too dry to whistle; his heart was going too fast to carry a tune.