cture of the earliest ploughing he could
remember.

He saw a half-circle of green hills, with snow still lingering in
the clefts of the higher ridges; behind the hills rose a wall of
sharp mountains, covered with dark pine forests. In the meadows
at the foot of that sweep of hills there was a winding creek,
with polled willows in their first yellow-green, and brown
fields. He himself was a little boy, playing by the creek and
watching his father and mother plough with two great oxen, that
had rope traces fastened to their heads and their long horns. His
mother walked barefoot beside the oxen and led them; his father
walked behind, guiding the plough. His father always looked down.
His mother's face was almost as brown and furrowed as the fields,
and her eyes were pale blue, like the skies of early spring. The
two would go up and down thus all morning without speaking,
except to the oxen. Ernest was the last of a long family, and as
he played by the creek he used to wonder why his parents looked
so old.

Leonard Dawson drove his car up to the fence and shouted, waking
Ernest from his revery. He told his team to stand, and ran out to
the edge of the field.

"Hello, Ernest," Leonard called. "Have you heard Claude Wheeler
got hurt day before yesterday?"

"You don't say so! It can't be anything bad, or they'd let me
know."

"Oh, it's nothing very bad, I guess, but he got his face
scratched up in the wire quite a little. It was the queerest
thing I ever saw. He was out with the team of mules and a heavy
plough, working the road in that deep cut between their place and
mine. The gasoline motor-truck came along, making more noise than
usual, maybe. But those mules know a motor truck, and what they
did was pure cussedness. They begun to rear and plunge in that
deep cut. I was working my corn over in the field and shouted to
the gasoline man to stop, but he didn't hear me. Claude jumped
for the critters' heads and got 'em by the bits, but by that time
he was all tangled up in the lines. Those damned mules lifted him
off his feet and started to run. Down the draw and up the bank
and across the fields they went, with that big plough-blade
jumping three or four feet in the air every clip. I was sure it
would cut one of the mules open, or go clean through Claude. It
would have got him, too, if he hadn't kept his hold on the bits.
They carried him right along, swinging in the air, and finally
ran him into the barb-wire fence