No matter how much he groaned over it, his mother was pitiless.

Sometimes Caleb plucked up courage and interceded.

"I don't believe he feels quite ekal to learnin' of his stint to-night," he would say, and then his eyes would fall before the terrible stern pathos in Deborah's, as she would reply in her deep voice: "If he can't learn nothin' about books, he's got to learn about his own soul.

He's got to, whether it hurts him or not.

I shouldn't think, knowin' what you know, you'd say anything, Caleb Thayer." And Caleb's old face would quiver suddenly like a child's; he would rub the back of his hand across his eyes, huddle himself into his arm-chair, and say no more; and Deborah would sharply order Ephraim, spying anxiously over his catechism, to go on with the next question.
It was nearly dark to-night when Ephraim finished his stint; he was slower than usual, his progress being somewhat hindered by the surreptitious eating of a hard red apple, which he had stowed away in his jacket-pocket.