elberg scar, Sam was commanding his forces of nature.

"Ugh--uu--ow, Sam," I shivered; but I came up under his arm and tried to
push one dripping section of old-roan hide until it joined the other,
though I couldn't quite make it. Over my shoulder Sam began to sew it
across with a huge crooked needle, helping me push the edges together as
best he could. At this auspicious moment the poet appeared at the barn
door in an absolutely dazed condition.

"Here you, Pete, too!" Sam commanded, without looking up. "Get here on
the other side and press the hide together as Betty is doing. This is
an awful long cut, but I can manage it, thanks to seeing Chubb sew up
Bates's mule. Whoah, Jude, old girl! Hold her steady, Mammy! Now, Pete,
press hard; never mind the blood!"

At Sam's determined reiteration of the word blood, my senses reeled, and
if it had been anybody but Sam sewing over my shoulder, I would have
gone down in a crumpled heap. Also I was stirred by one glance at
Peter's lovely long oval face with its Keats lock of jet-black hair
tossed aloft, and I remained conscious from astonishment.

This was a new Peter. His eyes burned in his face with determination. He
squared his legs, clad in his elegant idea of farming corduroys, at the
exact angle at which Sam's were set; then his long, white hands pulled
the bloody old hide together exactly in place.

"That's it, Pete, hold it there. You slip out, Betty, and hold Jude
while Mammy gets the hot water ready to wash it when it is finished.
Now, Pete, an inch farther along! Whoah, Jude!" And with his long needle
Sam began rapidly to draw the gaping wound together.

"Here, Byrd, you hold Jude," I said, suddenly; and giving the halter to
the dirty fledgling, who was snubbing tears in his distress over the
accident to his old friend, I quit the scene of the operation and fled
to the woods to faint down on a log and be as ill as I wanted to. It was
rather bad; and it lasted about a quarter of an hour.

Then, with my head turned determinedly away from the barn, I sought
distraction in an interview with my garden.

Oh, it was rapturous! Can anything in the world be as wonderful as
putting queer little brown things in the earth, where it scares you to
think of their getting all cold and wet and rotted, and then coming to
see them sprout and curl and run out of the ground? No, nothing can
compare with it unless it is seeing whole rows of them bursting out into
blooms and tassels