"
"I don't intend to come home tomorrow afternoon until I'm ready.
Or any afternoon. And if you don't like it--"
"Billy!" his mother cried; "Billy! go to bed!"
The boy obeyed.
Bill was fifteen when this took place. The impossible had
happened. He had challenged the master and had won. Even after he
had turned in, his father remained silent, feeling a secret
respect for him; mysteriously he had grown suddenly to manhood.
Martin was too mental to let anger express itself in violence
and, besides, strangely enough, he felt no desire to punish;
there was still the dislike he had always felt for him--his son
who was the son of this woman, but though he would never have
confessed aloud the satisfaction it gave him, he began to see
there was in the boy more than a little of himself.
"Poor Billy," his mother apologized; "he's tired."
"He didn't say he was tired--"
"Then he did say he was tired of working evenings."
"That's different."
"Yes, it's different, Martin; but can you make him work?"
"No, I don't intend to try. He isn't my slave."
With overwhelming pride in her eyes, pride that shook her voice,
she exclaimed: "Not anybody's slave, and not afraid to declare
it. Billy is a different kind of a boy. He doesn't like the
farm--he hates it--"
"I know."
"He loathes everything about it. Only the other day he told me he
wished he could take it and tear it board from board, and leave
it just a piece of bleak prairie, as it was when your father
brought you here, Martin.
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