TO WORK

"Fo' the land's sake, Mistah Anton, what fo' yo' puttin' up that pole on
the grass?"

"So that I can find the sun, Dan'l," the crippled lad answered cheerily,
as he held upright the pole, while Ross began to fill in the deep hole
that the two boys had spent the morning in making.

"Yo' don't need no pole to find the sun," the old darky answered; "why,
yonder's the sun, right up over yo' head."

"Is it right over my head, Dan'l?" the boy asked.

The negro, an old family servant, put his hand above his eyes and
squinted at the sky.

"Not right over," he corrected himself, "but mighty near it."

"How near?"

Dan'l looked at the boy with a puzzled air.

"Ah don't jest know how near," he answered.

"That's the idea, exactly," Anton rejoined, "I want to know how near."

"Is this hyar another of your contraptions to tell what the weather's
goin' to be like the year after next?" the plantation hand queried,
taking advantage of his position as an old family appanage. The
instruments had been a point of discussion all summer, for Dan'l prided
himself on being a weather prophet, though he based most of his
predictions on the behavior of the animals and birds around the farm.

"This is to tell time, not weather, Dan'l," Anton answered, "but we'll
use it for weather, too."

The darky shook his head.

"Ah don't hold with none o' them glass things with silver runnin' up an'
down in their insides, what you calls 'fermometers," he declared,
"they're not nateral. Ah believe in signs. When, in the evenin', a
rooster crows like he's done goin' to bust, ah knows sho' it's goin' to
rain befo' mornin'."

He ambled up to Ross, who was busily shovelling in the earth.

"Hyar, Mist' Ross," he said, "let me do that for yo'. Yo' ought to ask
old Dan'l when yo' got a job like that."

"That's all right," the older boy answered, readily yielding up the
spade, however, and wiping the perspiration from his brow, "it is
pretty hot, though."

"Yo' got no call to be workin' right near noon," the negro protested,
"that's not fo' white folks. Fust thing yo' know, yo'll be havin' a
sunstroke."

He shoveled vigorously as he talked, tamping the earth down hard.

"It's sho' goin' to be a hot summer," he said, "yo' only find the
field-mouse nests where the shadder's thickest. Thar," he continued,
patting down the earth level with his spade, "that's done now. Yas, suh,
it's hot."

He wiped the perspiration from his forehead w