"When yo' mad yo' kin 'complish de onpossible, en it doan' hurt yo',"
replied Dolcey, thus going Kipling one better.

But she watched Annie anxiously.

The girl held out, though the jolting and shaking racked her
excruciatingly and the pull of the reins seemed to drag the very flesh
from her bones. Now and then the golden field swam dark before her
eyes, the backs of the horses swelled to giant size and blotted out
the sun. But she kept on long after her physical strength was gone;
her endurance held her. Slowly, carefully, the machine went round and
round the field, and the two bent old figures followed.

And so they came to mid-morning. They had long since ceased to look or
care for any sign of the young master of the land. None of them
noticed him, coming slowly, slowly from the stables, coming slowly,
slowly to the field's edge and standing there, watching with
unbelieving, sullen eyes the progress of the reaper, the wavering arms
that guided the horses, the little shaken blue figure that sat high in
the driver's seat. But he was there.

It is said of criminals that a confession can often be extracted by
the endless repetition of one question alone; they cannot bear the
pressure of its monotony. Perhaps it was the monotony of the measured
rattle and clack of the machine going on so steadily that finally
impelled Wes Dean, after his long frowning survey of the scene, to
vault the low stone wall and approach it.

Annie did not check the horses when she saw him; she did not even look
at him. But he looked at her, and in her white face, with the dreary
circles of utter fatigue shadowing her eyes, his defeat was completed.
He put his hand on the bit of the nearest horse and stopped the team.

Then she looked at him, as one looks at a loathsome stranger.

"What you want?" she asked coldly.

He swallowed hard. "Annie--I'll--I'll cut the wheat, le'me lift you
down off there." He held out his arms.

She did not budge. "You going to cut it all--and haul it down to the
thresher?"

"Yes--yes, I will. Gee, you look near dead--get down, honey. You go in
the house and lay down--I'm afraid you'll kill yourself. I'm afraid
you'll hurt--him some way."

Still she did not move. "I'd ruther be dead than live with a man that
acts like you do," she said. "Grown up, and can't handle his temper."

Something in her quiet, cold scorn struck through to him and cut away
forever his childish satisfaction with himself. A new manhoo