ng, it left
behind it a spent and exhausted world. Horses and men and women
grew thin, seethed all day in their own sweat. After supper they
dropped over and slept anywhere at all, until the red dawn broke
clear in the east again, like the fanfare of trumpets, and nerves
and muscles began to quiver with the solar heat.

For several weeks Claude did not have time to read the
newspapers; they lay about the house in bundles, unopened, for
Nat Wheeler was in the field now, working like a giant. Almost
every evening Claude ran down to the mill to see Enid for a few
minutes; he did not get out of his car, and she sat on the old
stile, left over from horse-back days, while she chatted with
him. She said frankly that she didn't like men who had just come
out of the harvest field, and Claude did not blame her. He didn't
like himself very well after his clothes began to dry on him. But
the hour or two between supper and bed was the only time he had
to see anybody. He slept like the heroes of old; sank upon his
bed as the thing he desired most on earth, and for a blissful
moment felt the sweetness of sleep before it overpowered him. In
the morning, he seemed to hear the shriek of his alarm clock for
hours before he could come up from the deep places into which he
had plunged. All sorts of incongruous adventures happened to him
between the first buzz of the alarm and the moment when he was
enough awake to put out his hand and stop it. He dreamed, for
instance, that it was evening, and he had gone to see Enid as
usual. While she was coming down the path from the house, he
discovered that he had no clothes on at all! Then, with wonderful
agility, he jumped over the picket fence into a clump of castor
beans, and stood in the dusk, trying to cover himself with the
leaves, like Adam in the garden, talking commonplaces to Enid
through chattering teeth, afraid lest at any moment she might
discover his plight.

Mrs. Wheeler and Mahailey always lost weight in thrashing time,
just as the horses did; this year Nat Wheeler had six hundred
acres of winter wheat that would run close upon thirty bushels to
the acre. Such a harvest was as hard on the women as it was on
the men. Leonard Dawson's wife, Susie, came over to help Mrs.
Wheeler, but she was expecting a baby in the fall, and the heat
proved too much for her. Then one of the Yoeder daughters came;
but the methodical German girl was so distracted by Mahailey's
queer ways that Mrs. Whee