ever known to be on ill terms with Pap Overholt), and planted it to corn.
He put in a little garden, too; while Pap had achieved the establishment of
a small colony of hens (every one of whom, it appeared, laid two or three
eggs each day--at least that was the way the count came out).

The baby thrived, unconscious of all the grief, the perverse cruelty, the
baffled, defeated tenderness about her, and was the light of Pap Overholt's
doting eyes, the delight of Aunt Cornelia's heart. When she was eighteen
months old, and could toddle about and run to meet them, and chattered that
wonderful language which these two hearts of love had all their lives
yearned to hear--the dialect of babyhood,--the twin boys came to the cabin
on The Bench. And Pap Overholt's lines were harder than ever. Cornelia had
sterner stuff in her. She would have called a halt.

"Oh, John!" she expostulated finally, when she saw her husband come home
crestfallen one day, with a ham which Sammy had detected him smuggling into
the cabin and ordered back,--"John honey, ef you was to stop toting things
to the cabin and let it all alone--not pester with it another--"

"Cornely, Cornely!" cried Pap John, "you know Sammy cain't no mo' keep a
wife and chillen than a peckerwood kin. W'y, they'd starve! Huldy and the
chaps would jest p'intedly starve."

"No, they won't, John. Ef you could master yo' own soft heart--ef you could
stay away (like he's tole ye a minny a time to do, knowin' 'at you was safe
not to mind him)--Sammy would stop this here foolishness. He'd come to his
senses and be thankful for what the Lord sent, like other people. W'y,
John--"

"Cornely honey--don't. Don't ye say another word. I tell ye, this last year