ch her sisters-in-law imitated her and laughed at her, none too
secretly, was far from kind. While she never guessed what was going
on, she realized the antagonism in their attitude and stoutly resented
it.

Adam was his father's favourite son, a stalwart, fine-appearing, big
man, silent, honest, and forceful; the son most after the desires of
the father's heart, yet Adam was the one son of the seven who had
ignored his father's law that all of his boys were to marry strong,
healthy young women, poor women, working women. Each of the others at
coming of age had contracted this prescribed marriage as speedily as
possible, first asking father Bates, the girl afterward. If father
Bates disapproved, the girl was never asked at all. And the reason for
this docility on the part of these big, matured men, lay wholly in the
methods of father Bates. He gave those two hundred acres of land to
each of them on coming of age, and the same sum to each for the
building of a house and barn and the purchase of stock; gave it to them
in words, and with the fullest assurance that it was theirs to improve,
to live on, to add to. Each of them had seen and handled his deed,
each had to admit he never had known his father to tell a lie or
deviate the least from fairness in a deal of any kind, each had been
compelled to go in the way indicated by his father for years; but not a
man of them held his own deed. These precious bits of paper remained
locked in the big wooden chest beside the father's bed, while the land
stood on the records in his name; the taxes they paid him each year he,
himself, carried to the county clerk; so that he was the largest
landholder in the county and one of the very richest men. It must have
been extreme unction to his soul to enter the county office and ask for
the assessment on those "little parcels of land of mine." Men treated
him very deferentially, and so did his sons. Those documents carefully
locked away had the effect of obtaining ever-ready help to harvest his
hay and wheat whenever he desired, to make his least wish quickly
deferred to, to give him authority and the power for which he lived and
worked earlier, later, and harder than any other man of his day and
locality.

Adam was like him as possible up to the time he married, yet Adam was
the only one of his sons who disobeyed him; but there was a redeeming
feature. Adam married a slender tall slip of a woman, four years his
senior, who had b