hat the position of
overruling Providence was almost more than we could undertake, if we hoped
to do anything else.

* * * * *

These things--tinkering of latches and chairs, pump-mending, rescue work in
the orchard and among the poultry--filled our evenings fairly full. Yet
these are only samples, and not particularly representative samples
either. They were the sort of things that happened oftenest, the common
emergencies incidental to the life. But there were also the uncommon
emergencies, each occurring seldom but each adding its own touch of
variety to the tale of our evenings.

For instance, there was the time of the great drought, when Jonathan,
coming in from a tour of the farm at dusk, said, "I've got to go up and
dig out the spring-hole across the swamp. Everything else is dry, and the
cattle are getting crazy."

"Can I help?" I asked, not without regrets for our books and our
evening--it was a black night, and I had had hopes.

"Yes. Come and hold the lantern."

We went. The spring-hole had been trodden by the poor, eager creatures
into a useless jelly of mud. Jonathan fell to work, while I held the
lantern high. But soon it became more than a mere matter of holding the
lantern. There was a crashing in the blackness about us and a huge horned
head emerged behind my shoulder, another loomed beyond Jonathan's stooping
bulk.

"Keep 'em back," he said. "They'll have it all trodden up again--Hi! You!
Ge' back 'ere!" There is as special a lingo for talking to cattle as there
is for talking to babies. I used it as well as I could. I swung the
lantern in their faces, I brandished the hoe-handle at them, I jabbed at
them recklessly. They snorted and backed and closed in again,--crazy, poor
things, with the smell of the water. It was an evening's battle for us.
Jonathan dug and dug, and then laid rails, and the precious water filled
in slowly, grew to a dark pool, and the thirsty creatures panted and
snuffed in the dark just outside the radius of the hoe-handle, until at
last we could let them in. I had forgotten my books, for we had come close
to the earth and the creatures of the earth. The cows were our sisters and
the steers our brothers that night.

Sometimes the emergency was in the barn--a broken halter and trouble among
the horses, or perhaps a new calf. Sometimes a stray creature,--cow or
horse,--grazing along the roadside, got into our yard and threatened our
corn and