loud automatic time, with a
brassy resonance--healthy mechanical life awake. Man and machine, side
by side, punctuated the passage of time.

Alone in the darkness the mechanical mind of the clock conceived a bit
of fiendish pleasantry. With violent, shocking clamor, its deafening
alarm suddenly shattered the stillness.

The two victims of the outrage sat up in bed and blinked sleepily at
the dark. The younger, in a voice of wrath, relieved his feelings with
a vigorously expressed opinion of the applied uses of things in
general, and of alarm-clocks and milk pans in particular. He thereupon
yawned prodigiously, and promptly began snoring away again, as though
nothing had interrupted.

The other man made one final effort, and came down hard upon the
middle of the floor. Rough it was, uncarpeted, cold with the damp
chill of early morning. He groped for a match, and dressed rapidly in
the dim light, his teeth chattering a diminishing accompaniment until
the last piece was on.

Deep, regular breathing still came from the bed. The man listened a
moment, irresolutely; then with a smile on his face he drew a feather
from a pillow, and, rolling back the bed-clothes, he applied the
feather's tip to the sleeper's bare soles, where experience had
demonstrated it to be the most effective. Dodging the ensuing kick,
he remarked simply, "I'll leave the light, Jim. Better hurry--this is
going to be a busy day."

Outside, a reddish light in the sky marked east, but over all else
there lay only starlight, as, lantern in hand, he swung down the
frozen path. With the opening barn door there came a puff of warm
animal breath. As the first rays of light entered, the stock stood up
with many a sleepy groan, and bright eyes shining in the half-light
swayed back and forth in the narrow stalls, while their owners waited
patiently for the feed they knew was coming.

Jim, still sleepy, appeared presently; together the two went through
the routine of chores, as they had done hundreds of times before. They
worked mechanically, being still stiff and sore from the previous
day's work, but swiftly, in the way mechanical work is sometimes
done.

Side by side, with singing milk pails between their knees, Jim stopped
long enough to ask, "Made up your mind yet what you'll do, Guy?"

The older brother answered without a break in the swish of milk
through foam:

"No, I haven't, Jim. If it wasn't for you and father and mother and--"
he diverted wi