e the youth
as he looked westward were cottages, or the more important-looking
homesteads on the larger farms; and in the distance a white church spire
behind the trees marked the tiny settlement of Blaine's Smithy.

A Sabbath calm lay over the fields and woods. It was mid-afternoon of
an early February Sunday--the time of the mid-winter thaw, that false
prophet of the real springtime.

Although not a furrow had been turned as yet in the fields, and the snow
lay deep in some fence corners and beneath the hedges, there was, after
all, a smell of fresh earth--a clean, live smell--that Hiram Strong had
missed all week down in Crawberry.

"I'm glad I came up here," he muttered, drawing in great breaths of
the clean air. "Just to look at the open fields, without any brick and
mortar around, makes a fellow feel fine!"

He stretched his arms above his head and, standing alone there on the
upland, felt bigger and better than he had in weeks.

For Hiram Strong was a country boy, born and bred, and the town stifled
him. Besides, he had begun to see that his two years in Crawberry had
been wasted.

"As a hustler after fortune in the city I am not a howling success,"
mused Hiram. "Somehow, I'm cramped down yonder," and he glanced back
at the squalid brick houses below him, the smoky roofs, and the ugly
factory chimneys.

"And I declare," he pursued, reflectively, "I don't believe I can stand
Old Dan Dwight much longer. Dan, Junior, is bad enough--when he is
around the store; but the boss would drive a fellow to death."

He shook his head, now turning from the pleasanter prospect of the
farming land and staring down into the town.

"Maybe I'm not a success because I don't stick to one thing. I've had
six jobs in less'n two years. That's a bad record for a boy, I believe.
But there hasn't any of them suited me, nor have I suited them.

"And Dwight's Emporium beats 'em all!" finished Hiram, shaking his head.

He turned his back upon the town once more, as though to wipe his
failure out of his memory. Before him sloped a field of wheat and
clover.

It had kept as green under the snow as though winter was an unknown
season. Every cloverleaf sparkled and the leaves of wheat bristled like
tiny spears.

Spring was on the way. He could hear the call of it!

Two years before Hiram had left the farm. He had no immediate relatives
after his father died. The latter had been a tenant-farmer only, and
when his tools and stock an