His very expression seemed jubilant. He had longed for some chance to get me and now it had arrived. He did not speak to me, but bounded into the room where my wife was, and she must have read the same thing in his expression, for, as he talked about it later, I learned the first thing she said was: "Now, papa. You must not abuse Oscar. He loves me and is kind and doing the best he can, but he is all tied up with debt." He would tell this every few hours but I could see the evil of his heart in the expression of his eyes, leering at me, with hatred and malice in every look. He and Ethel turned loose in about an hour. From that time on, it was the same as being in the house with two human devils. They nearly raised the roof with their quarreling. Of the two, the Reverend was the worst, for he was cunning and deceitful, pretending in one sentence to love, and in the next taking a thrust at my emotions and home. I shall never forget his evil eyes. Ethel would cry out in her ringing voice: "You're practical! You're practical! You and your Booker T. Washington ideas!" Then she would tear into a string of abusive words. One day, after the doctor had been to the house, he called me aside and said: "Oscar, your wife is physically well enough, but is mentally sick. Something should be done so that she may be more quiet." "Is she quite out of danger?" I asked. He replied that she was. That night I told my wife of our conversation and the next day I left for Megory county. CHAPTER XXXVIII SANCTIMONIOUS HYPOCRISY I was preparing to seed the biggest crop I had ever sown. With Orlean helping me, by bringing the dinner to the field and doing some chores, during the fall we had put the farm into winter wheat and I had rented the other Megory county farm. I hired a steam rig, to break two hundred acres of prairie on the Tipp county homesteads, for which I was to pay three dollars an acre and haul the coal from Colone, a distance of thirty-five miles, the track having been laid to that point on the extension west from Calias. I intended to break one hundred acres with my horses and put it into flax. I had figured, that with a good crop, it would go a long way toward helping me get out of debt. I worked away feverishly, for I had gotten deeper into debt by helping my folks get the land in Tipp county.