,
insistent, eager, imperious. Dimly one felt the deep-seated trouble of
the earth, the uneasy agitation of its members, the hidden tumult of
its womb, demanding to be made fruitful, to reproduce, to disengage the
eternal renascent germ of Life that stirred and struggled in its loins.

The ploughs, thirty-five in number, each drawn by its team of ten,
stretched in an interminable line, nearly a quarter of a mile in length,
behind and ahead of Vanamee. They were arranged, as it were, en echelon,
not in file--not one directly behind the other, but each succeeding
plough its own width farther in the field than the one in front of it.
Each of these ploughs held five shears, so that when the entire company
was in motion, one hundred and seventy-five furrows were made at the
same instant. At a distance, the ploughs resembled a great column of
field artillery. Each driver was in his place, his glance alternating
between his horses and the foreman nearest at hand. Other foremen, in
their buggies or buckboards, were at intervals along the line, like
battery lieutenants. Annixter himself, on horseback, in boots and
campaign hat, a cigar in his teeth, overlooked the scene.

The division superintendent, on the opposite side of the line, galloped
past to a position at the head. For a long moment there was a silence. A
sense of preparedness ran from end to end of the column. All things were
ready, each man in his place. The day's work was about to begin.

Suddenly, from a distance at the head of the line came the shrill
trilling of a whistle. At once the foreman nearest Vanamee repeated it,
at the same time turning down the line, and waving one arm. The signal
was repeated, whistle answering whistle, till the sounds lost themselves
in the distance. At once the line of ploughs lost its immobility, moving
forward, getting slowly under way, the horses straining in the traces. A
prolonged movement rippled from team to team, disengaging in its passage
a multitude of sounds---the click of buckles, the creak of straining
leather, the subdued clash of machinery, the cracking of whips, the deep
breathing of nearly four hundred horses, the abrupt commands and cries
of the drivers, and, last of all, the prolonged, soothing murmur of
the thick brown earth turning steadily from the multitude of advancing
shears.

The ploughing thus commenced, continued. The sun rose higher. Steadily
the hundred iron hands kneaded and furrowed and stroked the b