ly like that. Bet she uses up the meat bill every month. And
look what she gets out of it. Bet she's twenty-six if she's a day. And
all she got was Hawkins. I must have looked good to her for a day or
two."

Bitterly he waited at the grade crossing while "Number Twenty-seven"
went lumbering by. It shrieked a high, exasperating whistle as it
passed, exulting in its trembling, shaking twenty-five miles per hour.

On he drove. Hot blasts of air came crushing about him, with the
sunlight shimmering white hot on the bare, dry pike. There was much
dust from countless automobiles hurrying by in both directions. He was
constantly churned up in clouds of fine white particles thrown back at
him by passing tires, hurrying on in a mad drive to get somewhere. He
was suddenly unbearably hot. But he drove on blindly.

About five miles out he came to a shady lane. It ran like a cool brown
gash between arching trees, off from the pike to the right. Away in
the distance the fields dipped and rose to the skyline, a golden waste
with here and there a patch of withering green. The lane was
irresistible. He swung suddenly into it and was caught in a shifting,
squirming quagmire of fine yellow sand. For a hundred yards he
struggled on, with the car careening back and forth across the road
and with much churning and slipping of tires. His shoulders began to
ache and he wearied of the effort. It was a useless waste of energy.
Spying a huge tree standing on the fence line on up ahead, he drew up
to it and stopped in its shade. There was barely room for any one to
pass on the other side of him.

For a moment he sat and dully stared out across the landscape. Then he
got out of the car, climbed over the fence and threw himself down on
the ground in the shade of the big tree.

A stupor seemed to have come over him. There was the splotchy edge of
shade just beyond his feet; there stretched a parched and drying
furrow. Withered stubs of corn-stalks poked up forlorn heads at
intervals in an endless row. Beyond them were more rows, and all about
him lay the scarred and cracking earth in yellow heaps and clods, with
the wind twisting fine spirals of dust from its rest and spewing it
broadcast. In the air was a drone of drab creatures being happy in
their drabness, rejoicing in the waste, thoughtless of the future.
That was it, the whole field, unkept, idle, lazying, was thoughtless
of the future. There stood the dead stubble, blackening and hopeless