o days of this new 'kick-up,' that 'fellow Freeland's'
family undoubtedly tasted the sweets of successful mutiny. The fellow
himself alone shook his head. He, like Nedda, had known nothing, and
there was to him something unnatural and rather awful in this conduct
toward dumb crops.

From the moment he heard of it he hardly spoke, and a perpetual little
frown creased a brow usually so serene. In the early morning of the day
after Malloring went back to town, he crossed the road to a field where
the farmer, aided by his family and one of Malloring's gardeners, was
already carrying the hay; and, taking up a pitchfork, without a word to
anybody, he joined in the work. The action was deeper revelation of his
feeling than any expostulation, and the young people watched it rather
aghast.

"It's nothing," Derek said at last; "Father never has understood, and
never will, that you can't get things without fighting. He cares more
for trees and bees and birds than he does for human beings."

"That doesn't explain why he goes over to the enemy, when it's only a
lot of grass."

Kirsteen answered:

"He hasn't gone over to the enemy, Sheila. You don't understand your
father; to neglect the land is sacrilege to him. It feeds us--he would
say--we live on it; we've no business to forget that but for the land we
should all be dead."

"That's beautiful," said Nedda quickly; "and true."

Sheila answered angrily:

"It may be true in France with their bread and wine. People don't live
off the land here; they hardly eat anything they grow themselves.
How can we feel like that when we're all brought up on mongrel food?
Besides, it's simply sentimental, when there are real wrongs to fight
about."

"Your father is not sentimental, Sheila. It's too deep with him for
that, and too unconscious. He simply feels so unhappy about the waste of
that hay that he can't keep his hands off it."

Derek broke in: "Mother's right. And it doesn't matter, except that
we've got to see that the men don't follow his example. They've a funny
feeling about him."

Kirsteen shook her head.

"You needn't be afraid. He's always been too strange to them!"

"Well, I'm going to stiffen their backs. Coming Sheila?" And they went.

Left, as she seemed always to be in these days of open mutiny, Nedda
said sadly:

"What is coming, Aunt Kirsteen?"

Her aunt was standing in the porch, looking straight before her; a trail
of clematis had drooped over her fine b