gh dust or mud and over
the stony hills. The old tree saw them pass--in its youth and
theirs--and by and by saw them return--fewer in numbers, and foot-sore,
but triumphant. I mentioned it to Pop. He said:

"Yeah--I was in the Civil War. It wa'n't much fun, but I'm lookin' for
my pension to be increased next year."

When there was no more brush or chopping I set Pop to laying stone wall
and said I would employ him steadily for a year. But that was a
mistake. Old Pop was a free lance, a knight errant. Anything that
savored of permanency smelled to him of vassalage. He laid a rod of
stone wall--solid wall that will be there for Gabriel to stand on when
he plays his last trump--blows it, I mean--in that neighborhood. But
then he collected, one evening, and vanished, and I did not see him any
more. I never carried the wall any farther. As Pop left it, so it
remains to this day.

[Illustration]

My plowman was a young man--a handsome, high-born-looking youth who came
one Sunday evening to arrange terms. He was stylishly dressed, and I
took him for a college lad on vacation. He assured me, however, that his
schooling had been acquired in the neighborhood, that he was a farmer on
his own account, with a team of his own, and that he was accustomed to
plowing rocky land. His name was Luther Merrill, and if I had thought
him handsome in his fine clothes, I considered him really superb when he
arrived next morning in work attire and started his great plow and big
white horses around the furrows. There had been a shower in the night
and the summer foliage was fresh--the leaves shining. Against a gleaming
green background of maple, alder, and wild clematis, Luther Merrill in
shirt and trousers, his collar open, his sleeves turned back, bending to
the plow and calling directions to his sturdy team, was something to
make one's heart leap for joy. I photographed him unobserved. I longed
to paint him.

My admiration grew as I observed the character of his plowing. A Western
boy wouldn't have stood it five minutes. The soil was at least half
stone, and the stones were not all loose. Every other rod the plow
brought up with a jerk that nearly flung the plowman over the top of it.
Then he had to yank and haul it out, lift it over, and start again. He
did not lose his temper, even when he broke one of his plow points, of
which, it seemed, he had brought a supply, in anticipation. He merely
called something encouraging to his horses an