from the mouth
of some wearied beast, but it was not permitted even that respite for
long; the grasshoppers respected no part of the bovine anatomy, and with
an angry snort and an annoyed toss of the head the tongue would be
withdrawn.

The perspiring cattle seemed so fatigued that the despairing children
thought at last that they might be turned toward home, but though whips
and voices were used to the utmost the nettled beasts could not be made to
face the stinging devils which settled thicker and ever thicker about
them. They came down to a walk, but they walked doggedly toward the north.
At last the sun's rays began to peep through. The air soon cleared, and
the scorched and burning children began to wish for even a cloud of
grasshoppers to protect them from the heat. Wherever the light fell it
disclosed moving masses of locusts which covered the entire face of the
landscape. The teeming cloud of insects was a pest equal to that of the
lice of Egypt. They overflowed the Kansas prairies like the lava from
Mount Vesuvius, burying vegetation and causing every living thing to flee
from their path.

At last the storm spent itself. The sun came out clear, and as hot as
molten brass. The cattle could hold out no longer. The swarms which flew
up in front of their moving feet were as unbearable as any that had come
from above. The exhausted beasts gave up and permitted themselves to be
headed toward home.

"I began to think they wouldn't stop till they had reached the State
line," the girl said with a relieved sigh, when they were safely started
down the first road they came upon after turning south again.

Luther made no reply. He had stopped the pony and was watching the inroads
of numberless scissor-like mouths on a stub of corn near the roadside. The
tassel was gone, the edges of the leaves were eaten away, and lines of
hungry insects hung to the centre rib of each blade, gnawing and cutting
at every inch of the stem.

"Th' won't be a cornstalk left standin' by night," Luther observed as the
girl rode up to see what it was that attracted his attention. "Crackie!
but I'm glad pap's sold out. It'd be no shoes for me this winter if we
didn't get away," he added, spitefully brushing a grasshopper from the end
of his nose and rubbing the injured member.

The girl's face fell at the mention of hard times. Times were always hard
in the Farnshaw home, but she could never get accustomed to them, and each
new phase of the