bloom, and long streamers of red began to
unroll along the vast gray dome of sky Uncle Frank, the driver, lifted
his voice in a "Chippewa war-whoop."

On a still morning like this his signal could be heard for miles. Long
drawn and musical, it sped away over the fields, announcing to all the
world that the McClintocks were ready for the day's race. Answers came
back faintly from the frosty fields where dim figures of laggard hands
could be seen hurrying over the plowed ground, the last team came
clattering in and was hooked into its place, David called "All right!"
and the cylinder began to hum.

In those days the machine was either a "J. I. Case" or a "Buffalo
Pitts," and was moved by five pairs of horses attached to a "power"
staked to the ground, round which they travelled pulling at the ends of
long levers or sweeps, and to me the force seemed tremendous. "Tumbling
rods" with "knuckle joints" carried the motion to the cylinder, and the
driver who stood upon a square platform above the huge, greasy
cog-wheels (round which the horses moved) was a grand figure in my eyes.

Driving, to us, looked like a pleasant job, but Uncle Frank thought it
very tiresome, and I can now see that it was. To stand on that small
platform all through the long hours of a cold November day, when the
cutting wind roared down the valley sweeping the dust and leaves along
the road, was work. Even I perceived that it was far pleasanter to sit
on the south side of the stack and watch the horses go round.

It was necessary that the "driver" should be a man of judgment, for the
horses had to be kept at just the right speed, and to do this he must
gauge the motion of the cylinder by the pitch of its deep bass song.

The three men in command of the machine were set apart as "the
threshers."--William and David alternately "fed" or "tended," that is,
one of them "fed" the grain into the howling cylinder while the other,
oil-can in hand, watched the sieves, felt of the pinions and so kept the
machine in good order. The feeder's position was the high place to which
all boys aspired, and on this day I stood in silent admiration of Uncle
David's easy powerful attitudes as he caught each bundle in the crook
of his arm and spread it out into a broad, smooth band of yellow straw
on which the whirling teeth caught and tore with monstrous fury. He was
the ideal man in my eyes, grander in some ways than my father, and to be
able to stand where he stood was