He was an old man now, but as hard, as gloomy, and as unlovable as he had been when in his prime. His wife had died very many years before, of no disease that Zephaniah or the doctor he called in could discover, but, in fact, of utter weariness at the dull life of repression and gloom which crushed her down. Of a naturally meek and docile disposition, she had submitted without murmuring to her husband's commands, and had, during her whole married life, never shocked him so much as she did the day before her death, when, for the first time, she exhibited the possession of an opinion of her own, by saying earnestly: "You may say what you like, Zephaniah, but I do think we were meant to have some happiness and pleasure on earth. If we were intended to go through life without laughing, why should we be able to laugh? Oh, how I should like to hear one hearty, natural laugh again before I die, such as I used to hear when I was a girl!" Jabez Whitefoot inherited his mother's docility of disposition, and, even when he grew to middle age, never dreamt of disputing his father's absolute rule, and remained strictly neutral when his wife, the daughter of an old comrade of his father, settled a few miles away, fought stoutly at times against his tyranny. "You are less than a man, Jabez," she would say to him, indignantly, "to put up, at your age, with being lectured as if you were a child. Parental obedience is all very well, and I hope I was always obedient to my father; but when it comes to a body not being permitted to have a soul of his own, it is going too far. If you had told me that, when I became your wife, I was to become the inmate of a dungeon for the rest of my existence, I wouldn't have had you, not if you had been master of all the broad lands of Leinster." But, though unable to rouse her husband into making an effort for some sort of freedom, Hannah Whitefoot had battled more successfully in behalf of her son, John. "You have had the management of your son, sir, and I will manage mine," she said. "I will see that he does not grow up a reprobate or a Papist, but at least he shall grow up a man, and his life shall not be as hateful as mine is, if I can help it." Many battles had already been fought on this point, but in the end Hannah Whitefoot triumphed. Although her husband never, himself, opposed his father's authority, he refused absolutely to use his own to compel his wife to submission. "You know, sir," he said, "you had your own way with my mother and me, and I say nothing for or against it. Hannah has other ideas. No one can say that she is not a good woman, or that she fails in her duty to me. All people do not see life from the same point of view. She is just as conscientious, in her way, as you are in yours. She reads her Bible and draws her own conclusions from it, just as you do; and as she is the mother of the child, and as I know she will do her best for it, I shall not interfere with her way of doing it."