joyously at him. "Don't be an ass, John-James," he said;
and it was the first time he had been able to meet any little speech of
the kind without strain. John-James stood at ease, and slowly some faint
trace of a change of expression appeared on his immobile features.

"I reckon thee'll do, lad," was all he said; but Ishmael felt his heart
give an upleap of triumph; he knew he had made his first conquest. As he
and John-James went into breakfast side by side he felt quite equal to
meeting Annie unperturbed. But he was not to be called on to make trial
of his stoicism, as Annie hardly spoke to him; but with a thrill of
emancipation he realised that his mother's tongue no longer held terror
for him--merely the annoyance of a persistent fly.

As long as he lived Ishmael never forgot the exquisite moment when he
broke his first furrow on his own land. Harvest gathered is a wonder and
a release from strain; sowing and tending of seed and young crops is
sweet, but ploughing holds more of romance than all the rest. It is the
beginning, the fresh essay with soil that has become once more savage;
it is the earliest essential of man's conquest of Nature; his taming of
her from a wild mistress to a fruitful wife.

The day shone with the clear pearliness of early June: high in air the
big cumulus clouds rode golden-white, trailing their shadows over the
dappled land beneath; the branches of hawthorn gleamed silvery amidst
the pearly blossom; a wine-pale sunlight washed with iridescence sky and
earth. In the great sloping field, which held six days' hard ploughing
between its stone ramparts, the granite monolith stood four-square to
all the winds that blew, defying ploughs and weathers. The two brown
horses waited by the highest hedge, the plough, that always looks so
toy-like and is so stubborn, quiescent behind them, a boy ready at their
heads, switch in hand. With a freshness of emotion never quite to be
recaptured, Ishmael gathered up the rope reins and took the handles of
the plough in his grip. The impact of the blade against the soil when
the straining horses had given the first jerk up the slope was as some
keen exquisite mating of his innermost being with the substance of the
earth ... a joy almost sensual, so strong was the pleasure of the actual
physical contact as yielding soil and fine hard edge met--his hands
sensitively aware of the texture of that meeting through the iron frame
of the plough. Up and down the field,