black oak beams,
bright copper pans, the flowers on the window-sill, the great, open
hearth, and the figure of that woman in her blue dress standing before
it, with her foot poised on a log, clung to his mind's eye with curious
fidelity. And those three kids, popping out like that--proof that the
whole thing was not a rather bad dream! 'Queer business!' he thought;
'bad business! That woman's uncommonly all there, though. Lot in what
she said, too. Where the deuce should we all be if there were many like
her!' And suddenly he noticed, in a field to the right, a number of men
coming along the hedge toward the road--evidently laborers. What were
they doing? He stopped the car. There were fifteen or twenty of them,
and back in the field he could see a girl's red blouse, where a little
group of four still lingered. 'By George!' he thought, 'those must be
the young Tods going it!' And, curious to see what it might mean,
Stanley fixed his attention on the gate through which the men were bound
to come. First emerged a fellow in corduroys tied below the knee, with
long brown moustaches decorating a face that, for all its haggardness,
had a jovial look. Next came a sturdy little red-faced, bow-legged man in
shirt-sleeves rolled up, walking alongside a big, dark fellow with a cap
pushed up on his head, who had evidently just made a joke. Then came two
old men, one of whom was limping, and three striplings. Another big man
came along next, in a little clearance, as it were, between main groups.
He walked heavily, and looked up lowering at the car. The fellow's eyes
were queer, and threatening, and sad--giving Stanley a feeling of
discomfort. Then came a short, square man with an impudent, loquacious
face and a bit of swagger in his walk. He, too, looked up at Stanley and
made some remark which caused two thin-faced fellows with him to grin
sheepishly. A spare old man, limping heavily, with a yellow face and
drooping gray moustaches, walked next, alongside a warped, bent fellow,
with yellowish hair all over his face, whose expression struck Stanley as
half-idiotic. Then two more striplings of seventeen or so, whittling at
bits of sticks; an active, clean-shorn chap with drawn-in cheeks; and,
last of all, a small man by himself, without a cap on a round head
covered with thin, light hair, moving at a 'dot-here, dot-there' walk, as
though he had beasts to drive.

Stanley noted that all--save the big man with the thr