"Go and charge swindler Moriah."
"Meddle not with him. Strong he is with the Lord."
"Teach him will I to pocket my honest wealth."
Because of his weakness, Joseph did not go to Moriah; to-day he said: "I
will to-morrow," and to-morrow he said: "Certain enough I'll go
to-morrow."
In the twilight of an afternoon he and Madlen sat down, gazing about,
and speaking scantily; and the same thought was with each of them, and
this was the thought: "A tearful prayer will remove the Big Man from His
judgment, but nothing will remove Essec from his purpose."
"Mam fach," said Joseph, "how will things be with you?"
"Sorrow not, soul nice," Madlen entreated her son. "Couple of weeks very
short have I to live."
"As an hour is my space. Who will stand up for you?"
"Hish, now. Hish-hish, my little heart."
Madlen sighed; and at the door she made a great clatter, and the sound
of the clatter was less than the sound of her wailing.
"Mam! Mam!" Joseph shouted. "Don't you scream. Hap you will soften
Nuncle's heart if you say to him that my funeral is close."
Madlen put a mourning gown over her petticoats and a mourning bodice
over her shawls, and she tarried in a field as long as it would take her
to have traveled to Moriah; and in the heat of the sun she returned,
laughing.
"Mistake, mistake," she cried. "The houses are ours. No undertanding was
in me. Cross was your Nuncle. 'Terrible if Joseph is bad with me,' he
said. Man religious and tidy is Essec." Then she prayed that Joseph
would die before her fault was found out.
Joseph did not know what to do for his joy. "Well-well, there's better I
am already," he said. He walked over the land and coveted the land of
his neighbors. "Dwell here for ever I shall," he cried to Madlen. "A
grand house I'll build--almost as grand as the houses of preachers."
In the fifth night he died, and before she began to weep, Madlen lifted
her voice: "There's silly, dear people, to covet houses! Only a smallish
bit of house we want."