As Sol Greening hitched his horse to the Widow Newbolt's fence, he heard her singing with long-drawn quavers and lingering semibreves: _There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins...._ She appeared at the kitchen door, a pan in her hand, a flock of expectant chickens craning their necks to see what she had to offer, at the instant that Sol came around the corner of the house. She all but let the pan fall in her amazement, and the song was cut off between her lips in the middle of a word, for it was not more than six o'clock, uncommonly early for visitors. "Mercy me, Sol Greening, you give me an awful jump!" said she. "Well, I didn't aim to," said Sol, turning over in his mind the speech that he had drawn up in the last uninterrupted stage of his journey over. Mrs. Newbolt looked at him sharply, turning her head a little with a quick, pert movement, not unlike one of her hens. "Is anybody sick over your way?" she asked. She could not account for the early visit in any other manner. People commonly came for her at all hours of the day and night when there was somebody sick and in need of a herb-wise nurse. She had helped a great many of the young ones of that community into the world, and she had eased the pains of many old ones who were quitting it. So she thought that Greening's visit must have something to do with either life or death. "No, nobody just azackly sick," dodged Greening. "Well, laws my soul, you make a mighty mystery over it! What's the matter--can't you talk?" "But I can't say, Missis Newbolt, that everybody's just azackly well," said he. "Some of your folks?" "No, not none of mine," said Sol. "Then whose?" she inquired impatiently. "Isom's," said he. "You don't mean my Joe?" she asked slowly, a shadow of pain drawing her face. "I mean Isom," said Sol. "Isom?" said she, relieved. "Why didn't Joe come after me?" Before Sol could adjust his program to meet this unexpected exigency, she demanded: "Well, what's the matter with Isom?" "Dead," said Sol, dropping his voice impressively. "You don't mean--well, shades of mercy, Isom dead! What was it--cholera-morbus?" "Killed," said Sol; "shot down with his own gun and killed as dead as a dornix." "His own gun! Well, sakes--who done it?" "Only one man knows," said Sol, shaking his head solemnly. "I'll tell you how it was."