The trees were quite loaded with the small green fruit, and there promised to be a very large crop.

One day Silas turned on her.

"You wait," said he; "mebbe I know what I'm about, more'n you think I do." Hannah scowled with sharp interrogation at her husband's shrewdly leering face.

"What be you agoin' to do ?" she demanded.

But she got no more out of him.
One morning about two weeks before the cherries were ripe Silas went halting in a casual way across the south yard towards his daughter Rose, who was spreading out some linen to bleach.