arney," she said, shading her eyes with her hand; "I wonder he
does not cut his fingers." She sat herself down upon the top rail and
leaned against the stake.

"My! what a sweep," she said in admiring tones as the young man swayed
to and fro in all the rhythmic grace of the mower's stride, swinging
easily now backward the curving blade and then forward in a cutting
sweep, clean and swift, laying the even swath. Alas! the clattering
machine-knives have driven off from our hay-fields the mower's art with
all its rhythmic grace.

Those were days when men were famous according as they could "cut off
the heels of a rival mower." There are that grieve that, one by one,
from field and from forest, are banished those ancient arts of daily
toil by which men were wont to prove their might, their skill of hand
and eye, their invincible endurance. But there still offer in life's
stern daily fight full opportunity to prove manhood in ways less
picturesque perhaps, but no less truly testing.

Down the swath came Barney, his sinewy body swinging in very poetry of
motion.

"Doesn't he do it well!" said the girl, following with admiring eyes
every movement of his well-poised frame. "How big he is! Why--" and her
blue eyes widened with startled surprise, "he's almost a man!" The tint
of the thistle bloom deepened in her cheek. She glanced down and made
as if to spring to the ground; then settling herself resolutely back
against her fence stake, she exclaimed, "Pshaw! I don't care. He is just
a boy. Anyway, I'm not going to mind Barney Boyle."

On came the mower in mighty sweeps, cutting the swath clean out to the
end.

"Well done!" cried the girl. "You'll be cutting off Long John's heels in
a year or so."

"A year or so! If I can't do it to-day I never can. But I don't want to
blow."

"You needn't. They're all talking about you, with your binding and
pitching and cradling, and what not."

"They are, are they? Who is good enough to waste breath on me?"

"Oh, everybody. The McKenzie girls were just telling me the other day."

"Oh, pshaw! I ran away from their crowd, but that's nothing."

"And I suppose you have not an idea how nice you look as you go swinging
along?"

"Do I? That's the only time then."

"Oh, now you're fishing, and I'm not going to bite. Where did you learn
the scythe?"

"Where? Right here where we had to, Dick and I. By the way, he's coming
home to-day." He glanced at her face quickly as he said this,