up. The whole moving cloud had lowered to a distinguishable
distance.

"Why, they're all grasshoppers!" she exclaimed; and indeed so true was the
observation and so rapidly were the grasshoppers settling that the boy and
girl were obliged to turn their backs and shield their faces from the
storm.

The cattle also, annoyed by the myriads of insects settling upon them,
began to move about restlessly and presently to mill slowly around,
threshing with their heads from side to side while they whipped their
flanks with their tails.

"I didn't know they came like this!" the girl said, as Luther's pony
sidled over toward her.

"What'd you say?" the boy demanded, leaning forward to catch her reply.

"I said I didn't know they came like this," the girl shouted, raising her
voice to make herself heard above the rasping noise of many wings. "Father
read out of the _Prairie Farmer_ last week that they was hatching out in
the south."

The two drifted apart and circled about the herd again. The cattle were
growing more restless and began to move determinedly away from the
oncoming swarm. To keep them in the centre of the section, and away from
the cornfields, the girl whipped her horse into a gallop.

Without paying the slightest attention to either her voice or her whip,
half blinded in fact by the cutting wings of the grasshoppers, the
irritated cattle began to move faster and, before either boy or girl knew
what was happening, were in full trot toward the north. Seeing that the
matter was becoming serious, Luther lent all the aid of which he was
capable and circled about the herd, shouting with all his strength, but
the cattle, contending against countless numbers of smaller things and
unable to look steadily in any direction because of the little wings which
cut like the blades of many saws, stumbled blindly against his horse if he
got in their way, and, shifting around him, went on.

The girl was beside herself with trouble and anxiety. Lashing her horse
one minute, and the nearest cow the next, she raged up and down in front
of the herd, bending all her energies toward deflecting her charges from
their course, but the struggle was useless.

Seeing that they could do nothing, Luther caught her horse by the bit as
she passed him and shouted explanations in her ear.

"Let 'em go, Lizzie! You can't stop 'em! I'll have t' come with you! We'll
just follow 'em up!"

"But they're going to get into that field right off if