nd it behooves us to be mindful that the
end of all things is drawing nigh," he remarked soberly.

"Look here, Elder Witham," the old lady exclaimed with growing
impatience, "you are here haying to-day, not preaching! I'm going to lay
that load of hay if there are men enough here to pitch it on the cart to
me."

Jim and Asa snorted; Theodora's efforts to keep a grave face were
amusing; and with queer little wrinkles gathering round the corners of
his mouth the old Squire, who had finished his luncheon, rose hastily to
go out.

We went back to the south field and plied our seven rakes vigorously for
an hour and a half. Then Asa went to get the horses and the long rack
cart. That day, I remember, Jim laid the loads. Halstead helped him to
tread down the hay, and Elder Witham and Asa pitched it on the cart. The
old Squire had mounted the driver's seat and taken the reins; and
Addison and I raked up the scatterings from the "tumbles."

In the course of two hours four loads of the hay had gone into the barn,
and we thought that the thirty-three tumbles that remained could be
drawn at the fifth and last load. It was then that grandmother Ruth
appeared. She had been watching proceedings from the house and followed
the cart down from the barn to the south field, resolutely bent on
laying the last load. Theodora and Ellen came with her to help tread
down the hay on the cart.

"Here I am!" she cried cheerily. She tossed her hayfork into the empty
rack and climbed in after it. Her sun hat was tied under her chin, and
she had donned a white waist and a blue denim skirt. "Come on now with
your hay!"

Elder Witham moistened his hands, but made no comment. Jim was grinning.
The old Squire drove the cart between two tumbles, and the work of
pitching on and laying the load began. No one knew better than
grandmother Ruth how a load should be laid. She first filled the
opposite ends of the rack and kept the middle low; then when the load
was high as the rails of the rack she began prudently to lay the hay out
on and over them, so as to have room to build a large, wide load.

But in this instance there was a hindrance to good loading that even
grandmother's skill could not wholly overcome. Much of the hay for that
last load was from the swales at the lower side of the field, where the
grass was wild and short and sedgy, a kind that when dry is difficult to
pitch with forks and that, since the forkfuls have little cohesion and
tend