"But he's a-goin' to
marry her. But I'll tell you both right here, she'll never set foot
in my house, ner I in her'n. Sam ken keep her, but what on, I don't
know. He gits right out of this here farm the day he marries her,
and he don't come back, not while I'm a-livin'."
It was all this that made old Billy Norris morose, and Mrs. Norris
silent and patient and laughless, for Sam married the despised
"gosling" right at harvest time, when hands were so scarce that
farmers wrangled and fought, day in and day out, to get one single
man to go into the field.
This was Sam's golden opportunity. His father's fields stood yellow
with ripening grain to be cut on the morrow, but he deliberately
hired himself out to a neighbor, where he would get good wages
to start a little home with; for, farmer-like, old Billy Norris
never paid his son wages. Sam was supposed to work for nothing but
his clothes and board as reward, and a possible slice of the farm
when the old man died, while a good harvest hand gets board and
high wages, to boot. This then was the hour to strike, and the
morning the grain stood ready for the reaper Sam paused at the
outside kitchen door at sunrise.
"Mother," he said, "I've got to have her.
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