A Daughter of the Land

Kate was far from physical flight as she pounded the indignation

of her soul into the path with her substantial feet. Baffled and

angry, she kept reviewing the situation as she went swiftly on her

way, regardless of dust and heat. She could see no justice in

being forced into a position that promised to end in further

humiliation and defeat of her hopes. If she only could find Adam

at the stable, as she passed, and talk with him alone! Secretly,

she well knew that the chief source of her dread of meeting her

sister-in-law was that to her Agatha was so funny that ridiculing

her had been regarded as perfectly legitimate pastime. For Agatha

WAS funny; but she had no idea of it, and could no more avoid it

than a bee could avoid being buzzy, so the manner in which 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.