Fifteen thousand dollars refused

The whole household meets the Lark to see Aron home for Thanksgiving. That night he tells Cal he wants to leave college and take over the ranch, and Cal talks him into sleeping on it. Cal spends the next day fighting himself — naming his jealousy aloud, admitting he is trying to buy his father, catching himself enjoying the beating he is giving himself — and resolves to give the money lightly and let Aron have the day. Dinner is a success: toasts, plum pudding, Abra's hand in Aron's under the table, Adam saying he has never had such a good Thanksgiving. Then Cal pushes the red-ribboned package across the table — fifteen thousand dollars made on bean futures. Adam tells him to give it back to the farmers he robbed, and says he could not take a profit on boys he sends out to be torn apart; what he wanted was pride like Aron's. Cal runs to his room and draws spirals until they are one black dot. Then he finds Aron in the street and says he has something to show him.

Adam refuses the gift for a reason that is genuinely good — he signs the papers that send boys to be killed — which makes the refusal unanswerable and unbearable. Cal does all the moral work in advance, alone, so the reader knows what was on offer. The damage is never shown: the chapter cuts to a pencil drawing tighter spirals, then to two brothers walking, then to a recruiting sergeant's joke.