th a redoubled clatter of milk on tin.

"Be honest, Guy," was the reproachful caution.

"--and Faith," added the older brother simply.

The reddish glow in the east had spread and lit up the earth; so they
put out the lantern, and, bending under the weight of steaming milk
pails, walked single file toward the house and breakfast. Far in the
distance a thin jet of steam spreading broadly in the frosty air
marked the location of a threshing crew. The whistle,--thin,
brassy,--spoke the one word "Come!" over miles of level prairie, to
the scattered neighbors.

Four people, rough, homely, sat down to a breakfast of coarse, plain
cookery, and talked of common, homely things.

"I see you didn't get so much milk as usual this morning, Jim," said
the mother.

"No, the line-backed heifer kicked over a half-pailful."

"Goin' to finish shuckin' that west field this week, Guy?" asked the
father.

"Yes. We'll cross over before night."

Nothing more was said. They were all hungry, and in the following
silence the jangle of iron on coarse queensware, and the aspiration of
beverages steaming still though undergoing the cooling medium of
saucers, filled in all lulls that might otherwise have seemed to
require conversation.

Not until the boys got up to go to work did the family bond draw tight
enough to show. Then the mother, tenderly as a surgeon, dressed the
chafed spots on her boys' hands, saying low in words that spoke
volumes, "I'll be so glad when the corn's all husked"; and the father
followed them out onto the little porch to add, "Better quit early
so's to hear the speakin' to-night, Guy."

"How are you feeling to-day, father?" asked the young man, in a tone
he attempted to make honestly interested, but which an infinite
number of repetitions had made almost automatic.

The father hesitated, and a look of sadness crept over his weathered
face.

"No better, Guy." He laid his hand on the young man's shoulder,
looking down into the frank blue eyes with a tenderness that made his
rough features almost beautiful.

"It all depends upon you now, Guy, my boy." Unconsciously his voice
took on the incomparable pathos of age displaced. "I'm out of the
race," he finished simply.

The heavy, weather-painted lumber wagon turned at the farm-yard, and
rumbled down a country road, bound hard as asphalt in the fall frosts.
The air cut sharply at the ears of the man in the box, as he held the
lines in either hand alternately,