ers were taken up, the children loaded in, the boys looking
back wistfully to the games and the candy-stands. Councill unfurled his
flag to the wind, and Bradley swung the eager horses into the lane. On
all sides the farmers' teams were getting out into the road; the work
of the marshals was done. Each man went his own gait.

The young people behind Bradley began to sing:--

"Out on an ocean all boundless we ride,
We're homeward bound,
Homeward bound."

And so along each lane through the red sunset the farmers rolled home.
Home through lanes bordered with velvet green wheat, across which the
sunlight streamed in dazzling yellow floods. Home through wild
prairies, where the birds nested and the gophers whistled. The dust
rose up, transformed into gold by the light of the setting sun. The
children fell asleep in their tired mothers' arms. The men shouted to
each other from team to team, discussing the speakers and the crops.

Smiles were few as each wagon turned into its gateway and rolled up to
the silent house. The sombre shadow of the farm's drudgery had fallen
again on faces unused to smiling.

Only the lovers lingering on the road till the moon rose and the
witchery of night came to make the girlish eyes more brilliant,
softening their gayety into a wistful tenderness, only to these did the
close of the day seem as sweet and momentous as the morning. While the
trusty horse jogged on, impatient of the slow pace set by his driver,
the lovers sat with little to say, but with hearts lit by the light
that can glorify for a few moons, at least, even the life of ceaseless
toil.

III.

BRADLEY RESOLVES TO GO TO SCHOOL.

A farm is a good place to think in, if a man has sufficient
self-sustaining force--that is, if work does not dominate him and force
him to think in petty or degrading circles.

It is a lonely life. Especially lonely on a large farm in the West. The
life of a hired man like Bradley Talcott is spent mainly with the
horses and cattle. In the spring he works day after day with a drag or
seeder, moving to and fro an animate speck across a dull brown expanse
of soil. Even when he has a companion there is little talk, for there
is little to say, and the extra exertion of speaking against the wind,
or across distances, soon forces them both into silence.

True, there is the glory of the vast sweep of sky, the wild note of the
crane, the flight of geese, the multitudinous twitt