"Old man," snarled the figure in the straw. "I ain't so old but I can
daown you, sir,--yessir, condemmit, yessir!"

"I'm your man," replied Jennings, smiling up at him.

The man rolled down the side of the stack, disappearing in a cloud of
dust and chaff. When he came to light, Milton saw a tall, gaunt old man
of sixty years of age, or older. Nothing could be seen but a dusty
expanse of face, ragged beard, and twinkling, sharp little eyes. His
color was lost, his eyes half hid. Without waiting for ceremony, the men
clenched. The crowd roared with laughter, for though Jennings was the
younger, the older man was a giant still, and the struggle lasted for
some time. He made a gallant fight, but his breath gave out, and he lay
at last flat on his back.

"I wish I was your age, young man," he said ruefully, as he rose. "I'd
knock the heads o' these young scamps t'gether,--yessir!--I could do it,
too!"

"Talk's a good dog, uncle," said a young man.

The old man turned on him so ferociously that he fled.

"Run, condemn yeh! I own y' can beat me at that."

His face was not unpleasant, though his teeth were mainly gone, and his
skin the color of leather and wrinkled as a pan of cream. His eyes had a
certain sparkle of fun that belied his rasping voice, which seemed to
have the power to lift a boy clean off his feet. His frame was bent and
thin, but of great height and breadth, bony and tough as hickory. At
some far time vast muscles must have rolled on those giant limbs, but
toil had bent and stiffened him.

"Never been sick a day 'n my life; no, sir!" he said, in his rapid,
rasping, emphatic way, as they were riding across the stubble to dinner.
"And, by gol! I c'n stand as long at the tail of a stacker as any man,
sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the state; no, sir; no,
sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's
pay--that's all, sir!"

Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up
there this afternoon."

The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty
places, and his endurance was marvellous. He could stand all day at the
tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent
air, as if it were all mere play.

He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier
and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity
that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with
tha