Back on the farm Adam asked him, “Why don’t you buy some new clothes? You’re a rich man. You act like you’re afraid to spend a penny.”

“I am,” said Charles.

“Why?”

“I might have to give it back.”

“Still harping on that? If there was anything wrong, don’t you think we’d have heard about it by now?”

“I don’t know,” said Charles. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

But that night he brought up the subject again. “There’s one thing bothers me,” he began.

“About the money?”

“Yes, about the money. If you make that much money there’s bound to be a mess.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, papers and account books and bills of sale, notes, figuring—well, we went through Father’s things and there wasn’t none of that.”

“Maybe he burned it up.”

“Maybe he did,” said Charles.

The brothers lived by a routine established by Charles, and he never varied it. Charles awakened on the stroke of four-thirty as surely as though the brass pendulum of the clock had nudged him. He was awake, in fact, a split second before four-thirty. His eyes were open and had blinked once before the high gong struck. For a moment he lay still, looking up into the darkness and scratching his stomach. Then he reached to the table beside his bed and his hand fell exactly on the block of sulphur matches lying there. His fingers pulled a match free and struck it on the side of the block. The sulphur burned its little blue bead before the wood caught. Charles lighted the candle beside his bed. He threw back his blanket and got up. He wore long gray underwear that bagged over his knees and hung loose around his ankles. Yawning, he went to the door, opened it, and called, “Half-past four, Adam. Time to get up. Wake up.”

Adam’s voice was muffled. “Don’t you ever forget?”

“It’s time to get up.” Charles slipped his legs into his pants and hunched them up over his hips. “You don’t have to get up,” he said. “You’re a rich man. You can lay in bed all day.”

“So are you. But we still get up before daylight.”

“You don’t have to get up,” Charles repeated. “But if you’re going to farm, you’d better farm.”

Adam said ruefully, “So we’re going to buy more land so we can do more work.”

“Come off it,” said Charles. “Go back to bed if you want to.”

Adam said, “I bet you couldn’t sleep if you stayed in bed. You know what I bet? I bet you get up because you want to, and then you take credit for it—like taking credit for six fingers.”

Charles went into the kitchen and lighted the lamp. “You can’t lay in bed and run a farm,” he said, and he knocked the ashes through the grate of the stove and tore some paper over the exposed coals and blew until the flames started.

Adam was watching him through the door. “You wouldn’t use a match,” he said.