kill himself, but had not wanted to die in the same room with Jim Gibson.
In his own way he had always been a very sensitive man and his only fear
was that rough hands fall upon him before he had completed the evening's
work. He was quite sure that had his wife been alive she would have
understood what had happened. She had always understood everything he did
or said. He remembered his courtship. His wife had been a country girl and
on Sundays, after their marriage, they had gone together to spend the day
in the wood. After Joe had brought his wife to Bidwell they continued the
practice. One of his customers, a well-to-do farmer, lived five miles north
of town, and on his farm there was a grove of beech trees. Almost every
Sunday for several years he got a horse from the livery stable and took his
wife there. After dinner at the farmhouse, he and the farmer gossiped for
an hour, while the women washed the dishes, and then he took his wife and
went into the beech forest. No underbrush grew under the spreading branches
of the trees, and when the two people had remained silent for a time,
hundreds of squirrels and chipmunks came to chatter and play about them.
Joe had brought nuts in his pocket and threw them about. The quivering
little animals drew near and then with a flip of their tails scampered
away. One day a boy from a neighboring farm came to the wood and shot
one of the squirrels. It happened just as Joe and his wife came from the
farmhouse and he saw the wounded squirrel hang from the branch of a tree,
and then fall. It lay at his feet and his wife grew ill and leaned against
him for support. He said nothing, but stared at the quivering thing on the
ground. When it lay still the boy came and picked it up. Still Joe said
nothing. Taking his wife's arm he walked to where they were in the habit of
sitting, and reached in his pocket for the nuts to scatter on the ground.
The farm boy, who had felt the reproach in the eyes of the man and woman,
had gone out of the wood. Suddenly Joe began to cry. He was ashamed and did
not want his wife to see, and she pretended she had not seen.