r. "I'll get
you some breakfast in the dining-room," said Mrs. Gabbard.

"No--just a little--on the corner of the table out here," replied
Scarborough.

Mrs. Gabbard and Sally bustled about while he stood in the doorway of
the shed, looking out into the yard and watching the hens make their
careful early morning tour of the inclosure to glean whatever might be
there before scattering for the day's excursions and depredations. He
had not long to wait and he did not linger over what was served.

"You've et in a manner nothing," complained Mrs. Gabbard.

"I haven't earned an appetite yet," he replied. "Just wait till this
evening."

As soon as he was out of view he gave a great shout and started to run.
"What folly to bother with, a foolish, trouble-breeding thinking
apparatus in a world like this!" he thought, as the tremendous currents
of vitality surged through him. And he vaulted a six-rail fence and
ran on. Down the hollow drenched with dew, across the brook which was
really wide enough to be called a creek, up the steep slope of the
opposite hill at a slower pace, and he was at the edge of the meadows.
The sun was clear of the horizon now, and the two wagons, piled high
with hay and "poled down" to keep the loads steady, were about to move
off to the barn.

"Bring back a fork for me, Bill!" he called to the driver of the nearer
wagon--Bill was standing on the lofty top of his load, which projected
forward and rear so far that, forward, the horses were half canopied.
Against Bill's return he borrowed Gabbard's fork and helped complete
the other wagon, the sweat streaming from his face as his broad
shoulders swung down with the empty fork and up with a great mat of hay.

They worked alternately in the fields and at the barns until half-past
eleven. Then they went into the shade at the edge of the meadow and
had their dinner.

"My old woman," said Gabbard, "says that two set-down meals a day in
harvest time's as many as she'll stand for. So we have dinner out here
in good weather, and to the barn when it rains."

The talk was of weather prospects, of probable tonnage to the acre, of
the outlook for the corn, of the health and family expectations of the
mares and the cows and the pigs. It died away gradually as one man
after another stretched out upon his back with a bunch of hay for an
odorous pillow and his broad-brimmed straw hat for a light-shade.
Scarborough was the fourth man to yield; as he doze