When she heard this talk of much room, there was that thought in her mind she had always of his marriage, and she drew him aside somewhat from the other two and looked at him beseechingly. It was the one thing about him that did not please her, that he was not willing for her to wed him, because she well knew what hot blood was and there was sign in this son of her own heat when she was young, and she knew he must sate it somehow and she grudged the waste. Better if he were wed to some clean maid and she could have her grandsons. Now even in the haste of the moment when he was eager to be gone, and the other two waiting in the shadows by the door, even now she laid her hand on his hand and she said coaxingly, her voice still whispering, “But, son, if you have so much room, then why not let me find a maid? I will find the best pretty maid I can--or if you know one, then tell me and let me ask my cousin’s wife to be the one to make the match. I would not force you, son, if it be the one you like is one that I would like too.” But the young man shook his long locks from his eyes and looked toward the door, and tried to shift her hand away. But she held him fast and coaxed again, “Why should your good heats be spent on wild weeds here and there, my son, and give me no good grandsons? Your brother’s wife is so cold I think there will never be children on my knees unless you put them there. Aye, you are like your own father, and well I know what he was. Plant your seeds in your own land, my son, and reap the harvests for your own house!” But the young man laughed silently and tossed his hair back again from those glittering eyes of his and said half wondering, “Old women like you, mother, think of nothing but weddings and births of children, and we--we young ones nowadays have cast away all that.... In three days, mother!” He pulled himself away then and was gone, walking with the other two across the dimly lighted fields. But three days passed and he did not come. And three more came and went and yet three more, and the mother grew afraid and wondered if some ill had come upon her son. But now in this last year she had not gone easily to the town and so she waited, peevish with all who came near her, not daring to tell what her fears were, and not daring either to leave her room far lest her son’s careful wife chance to draw the curtains aside and see the bundle under her bed. One night as she lay sleepless with her wondering she rose and lit the candle and stooped and peered under the bed, holding the parted curtains with one hand. There the thing was, wrapped in thick paper, shaped large and square and tied fast with hempen rope. She pressed it and felt of it and there was something hard within, not sheepskin surely.