." The pitchers stuck their forks upright in the stack and
leaped to the ground. Randal, the band-cutter, drew from his wrist the
looped string of his big knife, the stackers slid down from the
straw-pile, and a race began among the teamsters to see whose span would
be first unhitched and at the watering trough. What joyous rivalry it
seemed to us!--

Mother and Mrs. Randal, wife of our neighbor, who was "changing works,"
stood ready to serve the food as soon as the men were seated.--The table
had been lengthened to its utmost and pieced out with boards, and planks
had been laid on stout wooden chairs at either side.

The men came in with a rush, and took seats wherever they could find
them, and their attack on the boiled potatoes and chicken should have
been appalling to the women, but it was not. They enjoyed seeing them
eat. Ed Green was prodigious. One cut at a big potato, followed by two
stabbing motions, and it was gone.--Two bites laid a leg of chicken as
bare as a slate pencil. To us standing in the corner waiting our turn,
it seemed that every "smitch" of the dinner was in danger, for the
others were not far behind Ed and Dan.

At last even the gauntest of them filled up and left the room and we
were free to sit at "the second table" and eat, while the men rested
outside. David and William, however, generally had a belt to sew or a
bent tooth to take out of the "concave." This seemed of grave dignity to
us and we respected their self-sacrificing labor.

Nooning was brief. As soon as the horses had finished their oats, the
roar and hum of the machine began again and continued steadily all the
afternoon, till by and by the sun grew big and red, the night began to
fall, and the wind died out.

This was the most impressive hour of a marvellous day. Through the
falling dusk, the machine boomed steadily with a new sound, a solemn
roar, rising at intervals to a rattling impatient yell as the cylinder
ran momentarily empty. The men moved now in silence, looming dim and
gigantic in the half-light. The straw-pile mountain high, the pitchers
in the chaff, the feeder on his platform, and especially the driver on
his power, seemed almost superhuman to my childish eyes. Gray dust
covered the handsome face of David, changing it into something both sad
and stern, but Frank's cheery voice rang out musically as he called to
the weary horses, "Come on, Tom! Hup there, Dan!"

The track in which they walked had been worn into