stranger who comes but once, and now that he was here, Martin felt that
a mean trick had been played on him. He cogitated on the journey he
was to take, and it made him not afraid, but angry. It was a shabby
deal--that's what it was--when he was so healthy and contented, only
sixty-one and ready to go on for decades--two or three at least--forced,
instead, to prepare to lay himself in a padded box and be hurriedly
packed away. It had always seemed so vague, this business of dying, and
now it was so personal--he, Martin Wade, himself, not somebody else,
would suffer a little while longer and then grow still forever.

He would never know how sure a breeder was his new bull--the son of that
fine creature he had imported; two cows he had spotted as not paying
their board could go on for months eating good alfalfa and bran before
a new herdsman might become convinced of their unreadiness to turn the
expensive feed into white gold; he had not written down the dates when
the sows were to farrow, and they might have litters somewhere around
the strawstack and crush half the little pigs. His one hundred and
seventy-five acres of wheat had had north and south dead furrows, but he
had learned that this was a mistake in probably half the acreage, where
they should be east and west. It would make a great difference in the
drainage, but a new plowman might think this finickiness and just go
ahead and plow all of it north and south, or all of it east and west and
this would result in a lower yield--some parts of the field would get
soggy and the wheat might get a rust, and other parts drain too readily,
letting the ground become parched and break into cakes, all of which
might be prevented. And there was all that manure, maker of big crops.
He knew only too well how other farmers let it pile up in the barnyard
to be robbed by the sun of probably twenty per cent of its strength. He
figured quickly how it would hurt the crops that he had made traditional
on Wade land. He considered these things, and they worried him, made
him realize what a serious thing was death, far more serious than the
average person let himself believe.

Martin had gone to the barn a week before to help a cow which was
aborting. It had enraged him when he thought what an alarming thing
this was--abortion among HIS cows--in Martin Wade's beautiful herd!
"God Almighty!" he had exclaimed, deciding as he took the calf from the
mother to begin doctoring her at once. He