sbyterian
Church. All through his boyhood he had been what in our
country was called an "odd sheep" and had not got on
with his brothers. Of all the family only his mother
had understood him and she was now dead. When he came
home to take charge of the farm, that had at that time
grown to more than six hundred acres, everyone on the
farms about and in the nearby town of Winesburg smiled
at the idea of his trying to handle the work that had
been done by his four strong brothers.

There was indeed good cause to smile. By the standards
of his day Jesse did not look like a man at all. He was
small and very slender and womanish of body and, true
to the traditions of young ministers, wore a long black
coat and a narrow black string tie. The neighbors were
amused when they saw him, after the years away, and
they were even more amused when they saw the woman he
had married in the city.

As a matter of fact, Jesse's wife did soon go under.
That was perhaps Jesse's fault. A farm in Northern Ohio
in the hard years after the Civil War was no place for
a delicate woman, and Katherine Bentley was delicate.
Jesse was hard with her as he was with everybody about
him in those days. She tried to do such work as all the
neighbor women about her did and he let her go on
without interference. She helped to do the milking and
did part of the housework; she made the beds for the
men and prepared their food. For a year she worked
every day from sunrise until late at night and then
after giving birth to a child she died.

As for Jesse Bentley--although he was a delicately
built man there was something within him that could not
easily be killed. He had brown curly hair and grey eyes
that were at times hard and direct, at times wavering
and uncertain. Not only was he slender but he was also
short of stature. His mouth was like the mouth of a
sensitive and very determined child. Jesse Bentley was
a fanatic. He was a man born out of his time and place
and for this he suffered and made others suffer. Never
did he succeed in getting what he wanted out of life
and he did not know what he wanted. Within a very short
time after he came home to the Bentley farm he made
everyone there a little afraid of him, and his wife,
who should have been close to him as his mother had
been, was afraid also. At the end of two weeks after
his coming, old Tom Bentley made over to him the entire
ownership of the place and retired into the background.
Everyon