Aaron and Silvia grew up a few years apart on the old spread-out farm, with the wooded mountainside heaving on the south and stretching east and west. It was a neighborhood of few neighbors, and no village within many miles, and the old man was not talkative commonly, though he'd open up sometimes. Aaron and Silvia had always classed themselves together in subdued opposition to their grim ruler of destiny. To each other they called him “the old man,” and expressed by it a reverential but opposed state of mind. To Aaron the undoubted parts of life were the mountain-side of his pleasures and the level fields of his toil. Wimberton was but a troubled glimpse now and then, an improbable memory of more people and houses than seemed natural. Silvia tended to see things first through Aaron's eyes, though she kept a basal judgment of her own in reserve.
“He always licked us together since we was little,” said Aaron, looking at Silvia with softly reminiscent eye. “It was two licks to me for Silvy's one. That was square enough, and the old man thought so. When he got set in a habit he'd never change. It was two to me for Silvy's one.”
Aaron told him, but a week now gone, that himself and Silvia would wish to be married, and he seemed surprised. In fact he came at Aaron with the hoe-handle, but could not catch him, any more than a lonesome rabbit. Then he opened up astonishingly, and told Aaron of his low opinion of him, which was more spread-out and full of details than you'd expect. He wasn't going to give Aaron any such “holt on him as that,” with a guaranty deed, whatever that was, on eternity to loaf in, and he set him the end of the week to clear out, to go elsewhere forever. To Aaron's mind that was an absurd proposal. He wasn't going to do any such foolishness. The rather he sold his collection of skins to a farmer named Shore, and one morning borrowed a carpet bag and came over the Cattle Ridge hand in hand with Silvia.
From Preston Plains they hired a team, drove over the line into York State, and were married. The farmer named Shore laid that out for them. He had a back score of trouble with the old man.
“And Silvy's got a cat,” added Aaron, “and she catches rats to please herself. Silvy thinks she ought to catch rats to be obligin'. Folks that live up these trees don't act that way. No more did Shore.”