No. He would not budge. That was _his_ wife. A fellow that was man enough to have a wife ought to be man enough to take keer of her. He wasn't going to have his child born in the house of charity. There was no thoroughfare. Sammy was allowed to withdraw, and the council of two was resumed. As a result of its deliberations, Pap John drove away through the darkness and the sleet. By midnight two trips had been made between the big double log house at the Overholt place and the wretched cabin on The Bench, and all that Sammy would suffer to be brought to them or done for them had been brought and done. The cabin was, in a very humble way, inhabitable. There was food and a small provision for the immediate present. And here, upon that wild March night of screaming wind and sleet, and with only Aunt Cornelia as doctor and nurse, Huldy's child was born. And now a new order of things began. Sammy's energies appeared to be devoted to the thwarting of Pap Overholt's care and benefits. There should be no cow brought to the cabin; and so Pap John, who was getting on in years now, and had long since given up hard, active work, hastened from his bed at four o'clock in the morning, milked a cow, and carried the pail of fresh milk to Huldy and the baby, furtively, apologetically. The food, the raiment, everything had to be smuggled into the house little by little, explained, apologized for. The land on The Bench was rich alluvial soil. Sammy, in his first burst of independence, ploughed it (borrowing mule and plough from a neighbor--the one neighbor 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.”