He hates Ephraim for the way the self-righteous old hypocrite treated his mother. Believing that the farm is really his, Eben buys out the potential claim of his brothers by giving each three hundred dollars from a hoard of gold his mother had hidden. He bitterly resents the arrival of a young stepmother, and he continues to hate her even after she seduces him and he fathers her child. Her final act of...