the boy's duty to drag the soil free from grass,
after which it would be laid out into rows some three feet apart. When
this was done two furrows would be thrown together to give what the
farmers called a "rise," the point of which would be finally levelled,
when the ground would be ready for the peanut-sowing, which was
performed entirely by hand.

The boy worked industriously through the deepening dawn, giving an
occasional "gee up, Rhody!" to the mare, and following the track of the
harrow with much the same concentration of purpose as that displayed by
his four-footed friend. He was strong for his years, lithe as a sapling,
and as fearless of elemental changes, and as he walked meditatively
across the bare field he might have suggested to an onlooker the
possible production of a vast fund of energy.

Presently the gray light was shot with gold and a streak of orange
fluttered like a ribbon in the east. In a moment a violet cloud floated
above the distant hill, and as its ends curled up from the quickening
heat it showed the splendour of a crimson lining. A single ray of
sunshine, pale as a spectral finger, pointed past the woodlands to the
brook beneath the willows, and the vague blur of the mixed forest warmed
into vivid tints, changing through variations from the clear emerald of
young maples to the olive dusk of evergreens.

Last of all the ploughed field, which had preserved a neutral cast,
blushed faintly in the sunrise, glowing to pale purple tones where the
sod was newly turned. From the fugitive richness of the soil a warm
breath rose suddenly, filling the air with the genial odour of earth and
sunshine. The shining, dark coils of worms were visible like threads in
the bright brown clods.

Nicholas raised his head and stared with unseeing eyes at the gorgeous
east. A rooster crowed shrilly, and he turned in the direction of the
barnyard. Then he flicked the ropes gently and went on, his gaze on the
ground. His thoughts, which at first were fixed solely upon the teeth of
the harrow, took tumultuous flight, and he reviewed for the hundredth
time his conversation with the judge and the vast avenue of the future
which was opening before him. He would not be like his father, of this
he was convinced--his father, who was always working with nothing to
show for it--whose planting was never on time, and whose implements were
never in place. His father had never had this gnawing desire to know
things, this passio