ng to Horace and, as sand-grits in
oysters produce pearls, my unexpected appearances have more than once
astonished new thoughts in Horace, or yielded pearly bits of native
humour.

Ever since I have known him, Horace has been rather high-and-mighty with
me; but I know he enjoys my visits, for I give him always, I think, a
pleasantly renewed sense of his own superiority. When he sees me his eye
lights up with the comfortable knowledge that he can plough so much
better than I can, that his corn grows taller than mine, and his hens
lay more eggs. He is a wonderfully practical man, is Horace;
hard-headed, they call it here. And he never feels so superior, I think,
as when he finds me sometimes of a Sunday or an evening walking across
the fields where my land joins his, or sitting on a stone fence, or
lying on my back in the pasture under a certain friendly thorn-apple
tree. This he finds it difficult to understand, and thinks it highly
undisciplined, impractical, no doubt reprehensible.

One incident of the sort I shall never forget. It was on a June day only
a year or so after I came here, and before Horace knew me as well as he
does now. I had climbed the hill to look off across his own high-field
pasture, where the white daisies, the purple fleabane, and the
buttercups made a wild tangle of beauty among the tall herd's grass.
Light airs moved billowing across the field, bobolinks and meadow larks
were singing, and all about were the old fences, each with its wild
hedgerow of choke cherry, young elms, and black raspberry bushes, and
beyond, across miles and miles of sunny green countryside, the
mysterious blue of the ever-changing hills. It was a spot I loved then,
and have loved more deeply every year since.

Horace found me sitting on the stone fence which there divides our
possessions; I think he had been observing me with amusement for some
time before I saw him, for when I looked around his face wore a
comfortably superior, half-disdainful smile.

"David," said he, "what ye doin' here?"

"Harvesting my crops," I said.

He looked at me sharply to see if I was joking, but I was perfectly
sober.

"Harvestin' yer crops?"

"Yes," I said, the fancy growing suddenly upon me, "and just now I've
been taking a crop from the field you think you own."

I waved my hand to indicate his high-field pasture.

"Don't I own it?"

"No, Horace, I'm sorry to say, not all of it. To be frank with you,
since I came here, I've