SCENE: _At the_ MORTON _place, the same room in which_ SILAS MORTON _told his friend_ FELIX FEJEVARY _of his plan for the hill. The room has not altogether changed since that day in 1879. The table around which they dreamed for the race is in its old place. One of the old chairs is there, the other two are modern chairs. In a corner is the rocker in which_ GRANDMOTHER MORTON _sat. This is early afternoon, a week after the events of Act II_. MADELINE _is sitting at the table, in her hand a torn, wrinkled piece of brown paper-peering at writing almost too fine to read. After a moment her hand goes out to a beautiful dish on the table--an old dish of coloured Hungarian glass. She is about to take something from this, but instead lets her hand rest an instant on the dish itself Then turns and through the open door looks out at the hill, sitting where her_ GRANDFATHER MORTON _sat when he looked out at the hill._ _Her father_, IRA MORTON, _appears outside, walking past the window, left. He enters, carrying a grain sack, partly filled. He seems hardly aware of_ MADELINE, _but taking a chair near the door, turned from her, opens the sack and takes out a couple of ears of corn. As he is bent over them, examining in a shrewd, greedy way_, MADELINE _looks at that lean, tormented, rather desperate profile, the look of one confirming a thing she fears. Then takes up her piece of paper_. MADELINE: Do you remember Fred Jordan, father? Friend of our Fred--and of mine? IRA: (_not wanting to take his mind from the corn_) No. I don't remember him. (_his voice has that timbre of one not related to others_) MADELINE: He's in prison now. IRA: Well I can't help that. (_after taking out another ear_) This is the best corn I ever had. (_he says it gloatingly to himself_) MADELINE: He got this letter out to me--written on this scrap of paper. They don't give him paper. (_peering_) Written so fine I can hardly read it. He's in what they call 'the hold', father--a punishment cell. (_with difficulty reading it_) It's two and a half feet at one end, three feet at the other, and six feet long. He'd been there ten days when he wrote this. He gets two slices of bread a day; he gets water; that's all he gets. This because he balled the deputy warden out for chaining another prisoner up by the wrists. IRA: Well, he'd better a-minded his own business. And you better mind yours. I've got no money to spend in the courts. (_with excitement_) I'll not mortgage this farm! It's been clear since the day my father's father got it from the government--and it stays clear--till I'm gone. It grows the best corn in the state--best corn in the Mississippi Valley. Not for _anything_--you hear me?--would I mortgage this farm my father handed down to me. MADELINE: (_hurt_) Well, father, I'm not asking you to. IRA: Then go and see your Uncle Felix. Make it up with him. He'll help you--if you say you're sorry. MADELINE: I'll not go to Uncle Felix.