er of sparrows, and
the subtle exalting smell of the fresh, brown earth; but these things
do not compensate for human society. Nature palls upon the normal man
when he is alone with her constantly. The monotone of the wind and the
monochrome of the sky oppress him. His heart remains empty.

The rustle of flashing, blade-like corn leaves, the vast clean-cut
mountainous clouds of June, the shade of shimmering popple trees, the
whistle of plover and the sailing hawk do not satisfy the man who
follows the corn-plow with the hot sun beating down all day upon his
bent head and dusty shoulders. His point of view is not that from the
hammock. He is not out on a summer vacation. If he thinks, he thinks
bitter things, and when he speaks his words are apt to be oaths.

Still a man has time to think and occasionally a man dominates his work
and refuses to be hardened and distorted. Many farmers swear at the
team or the plow and everything that bothers them. Some whistle
vacantly and mechanically all day, or sing in endless succession the
few gloomy songs they know. Bradley thought.

He thought all summer long. He was a powerful man physically and turned
off his work with a ready knack which left him free to think. All day
as he moved to and fro in the rustling corn rows, he thought, and with
his thinking, his powers expanded. He had the mysterious power of
self-development.

The centre of his thinking was that slender young woman and the words
she had uttered. He repeated her prophetic words as nearly as he could
a hundred times. He repeated them aloud as he plowed day after day,
through the dreamful September mist. He began to look ahead and wonder
what he should do or could do. Must he be a farmer's hired man or a
renter all his life? His mind moved slowly from point to point, but it
never returned to its old dumb patience. His mind, like his body, had
unknown latent forces. He was one of those natures whose delicacy and
strength are alike hidden.

"Brad don't know his strength," Councill was accustomed to say. "If he
should ever get mad enough to fight, the other feller'd better go
a-visitin'." And a person who knew his mind might have said, "If
Bradley makes up his mind to do a thing he'll do it." But no one knew
his mind. He did not know its resources himself.

His mind seized upon every hint, and bit by bit his resolution was
formed. Milton, going by one Monday morning on his way to the seminary,
stopped beside the fen