ody not being permitted to have a soul of
his own, it is going too far. If you had told me that, when I became your
wife, I was to become the inmate of a dungeon for the rest of my
existence, I wouldn't have had you, not if you had been master of all the
broad lands of Leinster."

But, though unable to rouse her husband into making an effort for some
sort of freedom, Hannah Whitefoot had battled more successfully in behalf
of her son, John.

"You have had the management of your son, sir, and I will manage mine,"
she said. "I will see that he does not grow up a reprobate or a Papist,
but at least he shall grow up a man, and his life shall not be as hateful
as mine is, if I can help it."

Many battles had already been fought on this point, but in the end Hannah
Whitefoot triumphed. Although her husband never, himself, opposed his
father's authority, he refused absolutely to use his own to compel his
wife to submission.

"You know, sir," he said, "you had your own way with my mother and me,
and I say nothing for or against it. Hannah has other ideas. No one can
say that she is not a good woman, or that she fails in her duty to me.
All people do not see life from the same point of view. She is just as
conscientious, in her way, as you are in yours. She reads her Bible and
draws her own conclusions from it, just as you do; and as she is the
mother of the child, and as I know she will do her best for it, I shall
not interfere with her way of doing it."

And so Hannah won at last, and although, according to modern ideas, the
boy's training would have been considered strict in the extreme, it
differed very widely from that which his father had had before him.
Sounds of laughter, such as never had been heard within the walls of the
house, since Zephaniah laid stone upon stone, sometimes issued from the
room where Hannah and the child were together alone, and Zephaniah was
out with Jabez about the farm; and Hannah herself benefited, as much as
did the child, by her rebellion against the authorities. Jabez, too, was
conscious that home was brighter and pleasanter than it had been, and
when Zephaniah burst into a torrent of indignation, when he discovered
that the child had absolutely heard some fairy stories from its mother,
Jabez said quietly:

"Father, I wish no dispute. I have been an obedient son to you, and will
continue so to my life's end; but if you are not satisfied with the
doings of my wife, I will depart with he