a stacker as any man,
sir. Dummed if I turn my hand for any man in the State; no, sir; no,
sir! But if I do two men's works, I am goin' to have two men's
pay--that's all, sir!"

Jennings laughed and said: "All right, uncle. I'll send another man up
there this afternoon."

The old man seemed to take a morbid delight in the hard and dirty
places, and his endurance was marvelous. He could stand all day at the
tail of a stacker, tirelessly pushing the straw away with an indifferent
air, as if it were all mere play.

He measured the grain the next day, because it promised to be a noisier
and dustier job than working in the straw, and it was in this capacity
that Milton came to know and to hate him, and to associate him with that
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