commenced to tell me what I
should a-done, and what I shouldn't. I'm THROUGH with that. You will
all keep civil tongues in your heads this morning, or I'll get up and
go upstairs, an' lock myself in a room till you're gone, an' if I go,
it will mean that the law takes its course; and if it does, there will
be three hundred acres less land to divide. You've had Pa on your
hands all your lives, now you will go civil, and you will go easy, or
you will get a taste of Ma. I take no more talk from anybody. Katie,
go ahead with your figures."

Kate spread her sheet on the table and glanced around the room:

"The Milton County records show sixteen hundred and fifty acres
standing in Father's name," she said. "Of these, Mother is heir to
five hundred and fifty acres, leaving one thousand one hundred acres to
be divided among sixteen of us, which give sixty-eight and
three-fourths acres to each. This land is the finest that proper
fertilization and careful handling can make. Even the poorest is the
cream of the country as compared with the surrounding farms. As a
basis of estimate I have taken one hundred dollars an acre as a fair
selling figure. Some is worth more, some less, but that is a good
average. This would make the share of each of us in cash that could
easily be realized, six thousand eight hundred and seventy-five
dollars. Whatever else is in mortgages, notes, and money can be
collected as it is due, deposited in some bank, and when it is all in,
divided equally among us, after deducting Mother's third. Now this is
the law, and those are the figures, but I shall venture to say that
none of us feel RIGHT about it, or ever will."

An emphatic murmur of approval ran among the boys, Mary and Nancy Ellen
stoutly declared that they did.

"Oh, no, you don't!" said Kate. "If God made any woman of you so that
she feels right and clean in her conscience about this deal, he made
her WRONG, and that is a thing that has not yet been proven of God. As
I see it, here is the boys' side: from childhood they were told,
bribed, and urged to miss holidays, work all week, and often on Sunday,
to push and slave on the promise of this land at twenty-one. They all
got the land and money to stock it and build homes. They were told it
was theirs, required to pay the taxes on it, and also to labour at any
time and without wages for Father. Not one of the boys but has done
several hundred dollars' worth of work on Father's