ADDY DEERING.

I.

They were threshing on Farmer Jennings' place when Daddy made his very
characteristic appearance. Milton, a boy of thirteen, was gloomily
holding sacks for the measurer, and the glory of the October day was
dimmed by the suffocating dust, and poisoned by the smarting beards and
chaff which had worked their way down his neck. The bitterness of the
dreaded task was deepened also by contrast with the gambols of his
cousin Billy, who was hunting rats with Growler amid the last sheaves of
the stack bottom. The piercing shrieks of Billy, as he clapped his hands
in murderous glee, mingled now and again with the barking of the dog.

The machine seemed to fill the world with its snarling boom, which
became a deafening yell when the cylinder ran empty for a moment. It was
nearly noon, and the men were working silently, with occasional glances
toward the sun to see how near dinner-time it was. The horses, dripping
with sweat, and with patches of foam under their harness, moved round
and round steadily to the cheery whistle of the driver.

The wild, imperious song of the bell-metal cog-wheel had sung into
Milton's ears till it had become a torture, and every time he lifted his
eyes to the beautiful far-off sky, where the clouds floated like ships,
a lump of rebellious anger rose in his throat. Why should he work in
this choking dust and deafening noise while the hawks could sail and
sweep from hill to hill with nothing to do but play?

Occasionally his uncle, the feeder, smiled down upon him, his face black
as a negro, great goggles of glass and wire-cloth covering his merry
eyes. His great good-nature shone out in the flash of his white teeth,
behind his dusky beard, and he tried to encourage Milton with his smile.
He seemed tireless to the other hands. He was so big and strong. He had
always been Milton's boyish hero. So Milton crowded back the tears that
came into his eyes, and would not let his uncle see how childish he was.

A spectator riding along the road would have remarked upon the lovely
setting for this picturesque scene--the low swells of prairie, shrouded
with faint, misty light from the unclouded sky, the flaming colors of
the trees, the faint sound of cow-bells, and the cheery sound of the
machine. But to be a tourist and to be a toiler in a scene like this
are quite different things.

They were anxious to finish the setting by noon, and so the feeder was
crowding the cylinder to its limi