t most hated of all tasks, the holding of sacks. To a twelve-year-old
boy it seems to be the worst job in the world.

All day, while the hawks wheel and dip in the glorious air, and the
trees glow like banks of roses; all day, while the younger boys are
tumbling about the sunlit straw, to be forced to stand holding sacks,
like a convict, was maddening. Daddy, whose rugged features, bent
shoulders, and ragged cap loomed through the suffocating, blinding dust,
necessarily came to seem like the jailer who held the door to freedom.

And when the dust and noise and monotony seemed the very hardest to
bear, the old man's cackling laugh was sure to rise above the howl of
the cylinder.

"Nem mind, sonny! Chaff ain't pizen; dust won't hurt ye a mite." And
when Milton was unable to laugh, the old man tweaked his ear with his
leathery thumb and finger.

Then he shouted long, disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make
neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him,
just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell
to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent
a good deal of time trying to discover which were the original sections
of the coat, and especially of the vest, which was ragged and yellow
with age, with the cotton batting working out; and yet Daddy took the
greatest care of it, folding it carefully and putting it away during the
heat of the day out of reach of the crickets.

One of his peculiarities, as Mrs. Jennings learned on the second day,
was his habit of coming to breakfast. But he always earned all he got,
and more too; and, as it was probable that his living at home was
frugal, Mrs. Jennings smiled at his thrift, and quietly gave him his
breakfast if he arrived late, which was not often.

He had bought a little farm not far away, and settled down into a mode
of life which he never afterward changed. As he was leaving at the end
of the third day, he said:--

"Now, sir, if you want any bootcherin' done, I'm y'r man. I don't turn
m' hand over f'r any man in the state; no, sir! I c'n git a hawg on the
gambrils jest a leetle quicker'n any other man I ever see; yes, sir; by
gum!"

"All right, uncle; I'll send for you when I'm ready to kill."

II

Hog-killing was one of the events of a boy's life on a Western farm, and
Daddy was destined to be associated in the minds of Shep and Milton with
another disagreeable job, that of building